>There are too many video card/monitor combinations out there for any
>of us to really know all the safe combinations. I really think this
>is a setting that should be left up to the user. There's too much
>potential for harm, and not enough upside for my tastes.
You let people use Xtras like FileIO and FileXtra, which are capable
of wiping the user's hard drive. If you have to talk the user through
digging deep into the monitor settings to change the refresh rate, as
well as explaining what on earth is a refresh rate, and why they
should need to change it, then why bother with a resolution change at
all? Just tell the user to select 800 x 600, or whatever, and leave
them to discover the fact that there monitor doesn't show a picture,
and let them work out what is needed to cure that.
Monitors and projectors have a horizontal scan rate range of about 15
KHz up to 85 KHz or so (if it's a really good one, lower for a less
capable one). The horizontal scan rate is the refresh rate times the
number of lines (including any overscan ones). It doesn't take much
to exceed those rates. If your monitor is a mid-range one and can
deal with say 60 KHz, 1024 x 768 can only be 78 Hz or so, and any
monitors set to 75 Hz will be fine, but ones set to 85 Hz (which is
fairly common) will break up.
I don't disagree with the idea of limiting things a little to stop
someone from doing damage, but I still say that not allowing them to
set refresh rates is as likely to cause damage. An Xtra that was able
to do that could always default to not changing the refresh rate,
just to reduce the chances of accidentally setting an excessive
refresh rate.
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