paxdiablo's answer is great, but there are a lot of common resolutions that have just a few more or less pixels in a given direction, and the greatest common divisor approach gives horrible results to them.
Take for example the well behaved resolution of 1360x765 which gives a nice 16:9 ratio using the gcd approach. According to Steam, this resolution is only used by 0.01% of it's users, while 1366x768 is used by a whoping 18.9%. Let's see what we get using the gcd approach:
1360x765 - 16:9 (0.01%)
1360x768 - 85:48 (2.41%)
1366x768 - 683:384 (18.9%)
We'd want to round up that 683:384 ratio to the closest, 16:9 ratio.
I wrote a python script that parses a text file with pasted numbers from the Steam Hardware survey page, and prints all resolutions and closest known ratios, as well as the prevalence of each ratio (which was my goal when I started this):
# Contents pasted from store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey, section 'Primary Display Resolution'
steam_file = './steam.txt'
# Taken from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Vector_Video_Standards4.svg/750px-Vector_Video_Standards4.svg.png
accepted_ratios = ['5:4', '4:3', '3:2', '8:5', '5:3', '16:9', '17:9']
#-------------------------------------------------------
def gcd(a, b):
if b == 0: return a
return gcd (b, a % b)
#-------------------------------------------------------
class ResData:
#-------------------------------------------------------
# Expected format: 1024 x 768 4.37% -0.21% (w x h prevalence% change%)
def __init__(self, steam_line):
tokens = steam_line.split(' ')
self.width = int(tokens[0])
self.height = int(tokens[2])
self.prevalence = float(tokens[3].replace('%', ''))
# This part based on pixdiablo's gcd answer - http://stackoverflow.com/a/1186465/828681
common = gcd(self.width, self.height)
self.ratio = str(self.width / common) + ':' + str(self.height / common)
self.ratio_error = 0
# Special case: ratio is not well behaved
if not self.ratio in accepted_ratios:
lesser_error = 999
lesser_index = -1
my_ratio_normalized = float(self.width) / float(self.height)
# Check how far from each known aspect this resolution is, and take one with the smaller error
for i in range(len(accepted_ratios)):
ratio = accepted_ratios[i].split(':')
w = float(ratio[0])
h = float(ratio[1])
known_ratio_normalized = w / h
distance = abs(my_ratio_normalized - known_ratio_normalized)
if (distance < lesser_error):
lesser_index = i
lesser_error = distance
self.ratio_error = distance
self.ratio = accepted_ratios[lesser_index]
#-------------------------------------------------------
def __str__(self):
descr = str(self.width) + 'x' + str(self.height) + ' - ' + self.ratio + ' - ' + str(self.prevalence) + '%'
if self.ratio_error > 0:
descr += ' error: %.2f' % (self.ratio_error * 100) + '%'
return descr
#-------------------------------------------------------
# Returns a list of ResData
def parse_steam_file(steam_file):
result = []
for line in file(steam_file):
result.append(ResData(line))
return result
#-------------------------------------------------------
ratios_prevalence = {}
data = parse_steam_file(steam_file)
print('Known Steam resolutions:')
for res in data:
print(res)
acc_prevalence = ratios_prevalence[res.ratio] if (res.ratio in ratios_prevalence) else 0
ratios_prevalence[res.ratio] = acc_prevalence + res.prevalence
# Hack to fix 8:5, more known as 16:10
ratios_prevalence['16:10'] = ratios_prevalence['8:5']
del ratios_prevalence['8:5']
print('\nSteam screen ratio prevalences:')
sorted_ratios = sorted(ratios_prevalence.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True)
for value in sorted_ratios:
print(value[0] + ' -> ' + str(value[1]) + '%')
For the curious, these are the prevalence of screen ratios amongst Steam users (as of October 2012):
16:9 -> 58.9%
16:10 -> 24.0%
5:4 -> 9.57%
4:3 -> 6.38%
5:3 -> 0.84%
17:9 -> 0.11%