Re: [gentoo-user] New HD monitor stretches everything. How to teach Xorg?

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

Apparently, though unproven, at 18:30 on Wednesday 25 August 2010, Peter 
Humphrey did opine thusly:

> On Wednesday 25 August 2010 15:44:58 Mick wrote:
> > Fair enough, but anything other than the native resolution on an LCD
> > monitor will end looking distorted or blurred.
> 
> Why? Granted, LCD panels are made up of discreet pixels, but so are
> CRTs: the dots are deposited in trios, each illuminated through a hole
> in the shadow mask.

That is incorrect.

A CRT display is not pixelated - it is made up of triads (not trios) and there 
is no way of knowing which triad is lit up for any given "logical pixel". The 
electron beam is an analogue signal and it works mainly because there are more 
triads than logical pixels.

LCDs on the other hand are pixelated. Each group of three display elements is 
addressable in a consistent fashion. 

CRTs and LCDs are about as different as cassette tapes and CDs, and just as 
incompatible. Both cases need lots of magic voodoo to arrive at some 
commonality.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com