Created attachment 129184 [details] [review]
patch

On the VM image I'm using, the menu item still says "Screen Resolution", though the title of the window is "Display Settings".  Do I just have something out of date?  That seems wrong.

You mention Fn+F7.  I've never quite understood what exactly that cycles through.  Is that something under our control?  Is it something we can talk about in the documentation?  I figure if I'm not clear on it, plenty of users aren't either.  (Not a blocker for patch acceptance, just a suggestion.)

"... it would cost too much energy to constantly check for these changes."  Really?  As in it would suck away at my battery?

"... bold black outline in the canvas."  Canvas is sort of an implementation detail.  Can we find a better word for that area?

It might be good to discuss what some of the things in that window actually mean.  Rotation is perhaps self-explanatory.  Resolution isn't immediately obvious to everybody, though once they try a couple, they can figure out what it basically means.  Refresh rate isn't entirely obvious, though.  Why would I want a higher refresh rate?  Why would I want a lower one?  (Also not a blocker, but this is the sort of stuff that would make our documentation really useful.)

I'd say finding a better word for "canvas" is the only tentative blocker.  Although if there's no better suggestion by the RC release, we should just put this in anyway, since it's clearly an improvement on the whole.

(In reply to comment #2)
> On the VM image I'm using, the menu item still says "Screen Resolution", though
> the title of the window is "Display Settings".  Do I just have something out of
> date?  That seems wrong.

I believe Jens fixed it in svn, but there was no control-center release for 2.25.91.


> You mention Fn+F7.  I've never quite understood what exactly that cycles
> through.  Is that something under our control?  Is it something we can talk
> about in the documentation?  I figure if I'm not clear on it, plenty of users
> aren't either.  (Not a blocker for patch acceptance, just a suggestion.)

Yeah, its a little mysterious to me too :-) I hesitated to add more because I feared it would get too technical. If you want to know the details, look at generate_fn_f7_configs here:

http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gnome-settings-daemon/trunk/plugins/xrandr/gsd-xrandr-manager.c?revision=730&view=markup#l609


> "... it would cost too much energy to constantly check for these changes." 
> Really?  As in it would suck away at my battery?

Yes.


> "... bold black outline in the canvas."  Canvas is sort of an implementation
> detail.  Can we find a better word for that area?

Agreed a better name would be good. Further up I tried to avoid that problem by talking about 'graphical representations of the monitors'. 


> It might be good to discuss what some of the things in that window actually
> mean.  Rotation is perhaps self-explanatory.  Resolution isn't immediately
> obvious to everybody, though once they try a couple, they can figure out what
> it basically means.  Refresh rate isn't entirely obvious, though.  Why would I
> want a higher refresh rate?  Why would I want a lower one?  (Also not a
> blocker, but this is the sort of stuff that would make our documentation really useful.)

Sounds good. Though those parts of the documentation are copied 1-1 from the current docs, so at least we are not regressing in terms of uselessness :-(

Lets see...

Screen resolution refers to the pixel dimensions. A larger screen resolution means that more things fit on the screen, but everything will be smaller. 

Refresh rate determines how often the computer redraws the screen. A too low refresh rate (below 60) makes the monitor flicker and can cause discomfort to your eyes (this is less of a problem on lcd displays).


> I'd say finding a better word for "canvas" is the only tentative blocker. 
> Although if there's no better suggestion by the RC release, we should just put
> this in anyway, since it's clearly an improvement on the whole.

We could just dodge the naming issue by rewriting the offending sentence:

The currently selected monitor is the one whose graphical representation has a bold black outline. It is also indicated by the background color of the section label.

You can probably do this better than me, being the native-speaking documentation professional...

Created attachment 129629 [details] [review]
new patch