[OT] Terminal width

Drew Van Zandt drew.vanzandt at gmail.com
Tue Mar 30 09:47:00 EDT 2010


Germane to this:

http://oddones.org/lj_pics/drew_desk_crop.jpg

The Sapphire card with ATI driver lets me rotate the rightmost screen.   I
do still want to move the upper and lower panels to the leftmost screen, but
it's pretty nice as-is.

Weirdness:
Turn off Xinerama and restart X so you can tell it to rotate one of the screens.

Restart X so it can rotate the screen.
Turn Xinerama back on now that the screen is rotated.  Restart X again.
I also saw a transient oddity where I couldn't move my mouse pointer to the
rightmost screen.  Going to System -> Pref -> Display and checking
"mirror screens"

fixed this, inexplicably.
I've seen it restrict my mouse pointer to the shape of my
right-hand-screen while on the
left-hand screen as well, once.  All of these things were during
sessions where I'd mucked

with settings, though, it doesn't seem to happen anymore.

Also, while discussing screen rotation etc. with a colleague, he mentioned
that the usual
LCD subpixel arrangement (the RGB dots) on LCDs was designed primarily for
the typical
orientation, and that if rotated it could cause eyestrain.  I haven't found
any documentation
on this, but I did experience several minutes of disorientation/very slight
vertigo when I first
rotated the screen.  It's fine now, though, to all appearances.

--DTVZ

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Tom Buskey <tom at buskey.name> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:39 PM, Benjamin Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:37 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
>> <rozzin at geekspace.com> wrote:
>> > Maybe it's analogous to the way that newspaper-texts are laid-out
>> > in side-by-side columns.
>>
>>   One difference that may be of significance is: Newspaper is of fixed
>> position and layout, while most electronic text tends to move around
>> (scroll).  So unless your source file can fit in two 80-character
>> columns, maybe that won't work the same.
>>
>
> I find it a bit easier to read/scan newspapers and magazine articles in
> narrow columns then wide.  There's an optimal width.  Reference books are
> wider.  Paperback novels seem optimal for pleasure reading.  I'm sure
> there's some kind of typographical explanation.  Serif fonts are supposed to
> be easier to read.
>
>
>>
>> >> Why does this matter?  It's commonly claimed that human
>> >> understanding significantly increases when the information is fit in
>> >> to the field-of-view at one time.
>> >
>> > The bit about `more information fitting into the field of view at once'
>> > is interesting, because `the field of view' isn't necessarily as wide
>> > as people think it is ...
>>
>>  "Field of view" may not be the correct term.  That's my description.
>>  It's always been presented to me in terms of things like a printed
>> page, a screenful, etc.  I guess it boils down to the idea that
>> whenever visual perception is "re-anchored" (my term) -- e.g., the
>> (printed) page is turned, or the window is scrolled -- the level of
>> comprehension decreases.
>>
>>  Pure speculation now: If some people are more spatially oriented
>> then others, it might follow that the more-spatially-oriented are more
>> effected by this.
>>
>
> Most text applications assume 80 columns, at least unconsiously.  The only
> app I made my screen wider for is sdiff or a gui diff.
>
> I usually want a taller screen.
>
> --
> If it's fixed, don't break it
>
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