Why EDID is not trustworthy for DPI

[Jon Masters]

On Thu, 2011-10-06 at 12:12 -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-10-06 at 11:14 -0400, Jon Masters wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-10-04 at 13:54 -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
> > > EDID does not reliably give you the size of the display.
> > 
> > How about "EDID as it exists today". Since you're able to so beautifully
> > explain what the pitfalls are, I'd assume you've raised this with the
> > VESA and asked that they revisit this in the future to accurately
> > provide DPI information that Operating Systems can rely on?
> 
> Given that successive revisions of the spec have gone out of their way
> to make it acceptable for displays to provide _less_ useful information,
> on the grounds of manufacturing cost reduction, I think the momentum is
> quite in the other direction.
> 
> More pragmatically, VESA are not the people with any influence here.
> The only thing that matters to a monitor vendor is what Windows does
> when you plug it in.  Linux can stamp its little foot all it wants.  No
> one will care.  If you want to be a big enough player in that market to
> have some influence, you have to start by playing in the sandbox that's
> already built, and in that sandbox physical dimensions are just not
> reliable and never will be.
> 
> Cope.

Ok. I can cope, and not to flog a dead horse here...but has any effort
been made anywhere on the Open Source side of things to influence future
EDID specs? I'm sure Linux can stamp all it wants and nobody will care,
but it probably doesn't hurt to raise this for discussion next time
there's an update to the standard - or, shock, reach out to MSFT and see
if they have any interest in working together on fixing this experience
which perhaps also causes problems they care about on Windows.

Just a suggestion.

Jon.