On Tuesday 22 January 2002 06:44, Marius Nita wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 10:15:27PM -0600, Jamin W. Collins wrote:
> > I too use Xinerama in Blackbox, and have some difficulty understanding
> > the frequently voiced viewpoint that Blackbox's Xinerama support is
> > broken in some way. There is nothing broken concerning Blackbox's
> > current Xinerama support.
>
> I haven't used bb with xinerama, but i believe that there are certain
> "common-sense" issues which bb does not address when used with xinerama.
> when you maximize a window currently in bb, i believe that the window spans
> both screens? (this is not correct behavior)
Actually, it is correct. The reason the name xinerama was chosen is to make
it possible to have these walls of 10x10 monitors to work like one big screen
together. When you take this into account, it's obvious that blackbox does
the right thing here.
But unfortunately the right thing here isn't exactly The Right Thing (TM).
Most desktop users expect to use the two monitors as two screens, not as a
single identity. This is not what xinerama is for, but it turns out that it's
fairly easy to work this way, giving users with two monitors much more
desktop space. But when this is the way you want to work, then maximizing to
both monitors doesn't feel right, popping up windows that have a half on each
monitor doesn't feel right etc...
This is the reason most windowmanagers either have or are adding so-called
xinerama support: To change the behaviour from the default one to a desktop
ready one.
> also, i don't think that bb addresses the "dead area" issue, when xinerama
> is used with monitors of different resolution: if you have a monitor
> running at 1280x1024 and one that runs at 800x600, non-xinerama aware wm's
> see the screen as one big rectangle, ignoring the fact that part of it
> cannot be used. (since the second monitor is much smaller.)
This is quite a big issue in this setup. If not handled to the users
expectations (which here again goes against the original idea for xinerama),
the user will be annoyed.
> > The idea behind Xinerama is simple, to make multiple physical screens
> > function as one logical screen. Thus, it should be possible (and is
> > under Blackbox currently) for items, that would normally appear anywhere
> > on a single physical screen, to open anywhere on the one (Xinerama
> > provided) logical screen. Even if this means that it opens partially on
> > two different physical screens.
> >
> > What is currently being proposed, is a patch to create artificial
> > boundaries (that in this case happen to coincide with the physical
> > monitor sizes) that items should not cross. While this may sound like a
> > nice feature, that's all it is. It has nothing to do with Xinerama (if
> > you don't believe me check with the developers, I have). So, please
> > take it at what it is, a patch to add artificial no-cross boundary
> > generation to Blackbox.
> >
> > I see no need for patches of this nature to be included in Blackbox.
I do, because this make xinerama behave like a desktop user would prefer it,
not as someone watching eurosport on the TV wall would.
Bo.
--
Bo Thorsen | Praestevejen 4
Free software developer | 5290 Marslev
SuSE Labs | Denmark
