high resolution; unreadable text?
 

If the resolution is increased to a high value things like text often become so small as to be unreadable. Is there any way round this? Am I really getting higher resolution or is it just some sort of malfunction?

Thanks any help.

bigger font, lower resolution, better monitor or reading glasses :) I find that anything over 1024x768 text is almost unreadable for me too 1024x768 is way better then a dvd (720x480) so I don't see any point in using a higher res. even for games I can't see the difference well enough to justify hard to read text and the cpu overhead. some monitors (mostly crt) can do a higher res but it doesn't look as nice. unless I'll be looking at my screen with magnifying glass I just don't see the point.

In your /etc/X11/xorg.conf, you can specify "DisplaySize 400 300" in the Monitor section to define how large your display is in millimeters. The fonts from most applications will scale according to this setting. Thus, when the display resolution changes the fonts will remain roughly the same physical size.

My main workstation runs at 2048x1536, but I use large fonts so it's more like a typical 1024x768 screen in actual usage. Sometimes, I use the Opera web browser, which has the capability to zoom web pages. At 200%, the 2048x1536 display is equivalent to a 1024x768 display--but with really nice smooth fonts.

Good show both.
By coincidence does this answer another question I just asked in the hardware forum?

Could "DisplaySize 400 300" be used to force a widescreen TV monitor to make the display a sensible shape - not stretched sideways? Incidentally I have XF86Config not xorg.conf.

I don't think so. I think X always assumes square pixels. I saw that other question. The answer I'd use would be to create a custom modeline, but apparently that's sort of an old fashioned way of doing things.