From: Jonathan C Day <j.c.day@larc.nasa.gov>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:05:00 -0400 (EDT)

Re: set_mode complexity

On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET) wrote:
> 1) I think nobody needs a display driver that supports any propposed 
> mode. I
> think most of the applications can work with a list of common modes. 
> Even when
> some program could need it we don't need to provide such a facilitie 
> in the
> module (I explain it latter).

I could be completely missing what you're saying here, so apologies
in advance if I am. As I understand it, GGI needs to be able to work
with non-Wintel standards (since it's cross-platform) and that it's
desirable to run ggi-based X servers. If I'm correct on the first of
these, then "common modes" must include any and all common non-Wintel
graphic modes on supported platforms. If I'm correct on the latter,
there's a real problem as X configuration files allow you to tune the
behaviour of the graphics display in a way that has definitely little
to do with "common modes". A ggi X server would need to be able to
process an Xconfig file and make sense of it, in an efficient manner.
Other than making the system as flexible as possible, I have no idea
how you could achieve this, in any practical way, using only standard
modes.

Jonathan Day