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On 02.09.2011 21:16, Piotr Adamus wrote:
> I am just wondering. How is that possible if I run Xorg only on Intel
> and two physical monitors Awesome somehow can recognize them and set
> tag list separate per each monitor (so I use only one screen per
> xorg.conf).
> 
> And if I use two screens (Intel and Displalink) awesome cannot
> recognize anymore that I run two monitors?
> 
> 
> How is that?

Hi,

First, awesome checks if the XINERAMA extension is available and gives out
useful information (there is more information involved than this command prints,
but this should be the most important stuff).

$ xdpyinfo -ext XINERAMA | grep -A100 XINERAMA\ version
XINERAMA version 1.1 opcode: 150
  head #0: 1024x768 @ 0,0
  head #1: 1680x1050 @ 1024,0

If XINERAMA isn't present or isn't enabled, it falls back to "one screen only /
Zaphod mode". This is what the multimonitor support looked like back when X11
was born. For example, one cannot move windows from one screen to the other in
this mode.

$ xdpyinfo | grep  -B2 resolution
screen #0:
  dimensions:    2704x1050 pixels (532x206 millimeters)
  resolution:    129x129 dots per inch

(Please notice that the resolution printed here is the "sum" of my both screens
as seen by XINERAMA)

The one problem that I know of is that it might be possible to have both zaphod
mode and XINERAMA at the same time. So there are multiple X11 protocol screens
and some of them are further split up via XINERAMA. I don't think that this
should be possible since there doesn't seem a way to map the info XINERAMA to
one of the protocol screens. Or something like that... Perhaps RANDR gives out
useful information in this case? Dunno

git/master will also ask RANDR and prefer the information from there over the
other two ways, if RANDR shows more than one display[1]:

$ xrandr | grep connected
LVDS1 connected 1680x1050+1024+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
331mm x 207mm
VGA1 connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 307mm x 
230mm
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

The support for zaphod mode was dropped from git/master. However, this means
that it might (untested, I didn't manage to disable XINERAMA) be possible to
have one awesome instance per X11 screen (Or even run another window manager on
the other screens).

Hopefully you now know what a mess X11 can be.

Cheers,
Uli

[1]: The reson for this "if" is the nvidia binary blob driver. They replace the
XINERAMA implementation of the X server with their own version. The result is
that you get half-useful information from XINERAMA, but RANDR only sees a big,
single screen. Well done, nvidia!

P.S.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaphod_Beeblebrox
     (Zaphod mode is also called Multihead (or the other way around?))
- -- 
- - Buck, when, exactly, did you lose your mind?
- - Three months ago. I woke up one morning married to a pineapple.
  An ugly pineapple... But I loved her.
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