Xinerama + Virtual Desktops

[Paul Bohme]

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 18:33:00 -0400
Scott Rubin <slr2777 at cs.rit.edu> wrote:

> OK,
> 
> Tell me if this idea is crazy, already implemented, or the greatest 
> thing ever because I'm not sure.
> 
> I already know that in CVS xinerama support is much improved, but as I
> don't like to do anything that will mess up portage (gentoo user) I 
> don't use it yet.

There's always the possibility of creating an ebuild to pull cvs sources
and build them.  That's living life a bit on the edge, but ... ;-)

> Anyway, right now, in xfce 4.05 the way it works is this.  The virtual
> desktop encompasses both monitors.  If I want something to be always
> on the left monitor I have to make it sticky so it is on all desktops.
> 
> Also the pager displays the desktops as one very wide thing instead of
> two separate squares, which makes more sense visually as I have two 
> monitors with different resolutions.  So I have been making heavy
> heavy use of devilspie so that applications I want to appear on the
> smaller monitor always do not appear in the pager or taskbar.
> 
> I just had a vision of how it could be perfect.  First, make virtual 
> desktops a single monitor in size.  So I can set the left screen to be
> desktop 5 and the right screen to be desktop 1, or any other
> combination I want.  I should also be able to put the same desktop on
> both screens. Of course sometimes I want it to be the other way
> around, so maybe have some desktops be one screen wide and some be
> dual screen? That needs more thought.

I run both my work and home systems dual-headed, both with XFCE 4.0.x
but with dual (dueling?) panels.  Although this isn't the 'recommended'
configuration, it gives me exactly the kind of setup that you're talking
about.  Having the monitors rotate through desktops independently is the
make-or-break feature that makes running against separate X displays
worthwhile.

> The second though I had is this. If I can put any virtual desktop on
> any screen at any time, what happens to things like pager, taskbar,
> panel, etc.  What  about gaim and gkrellm/torsmo/gdesklets,etc that
> you want to always see?  Add the ability to make windows stick not to
> all virtual desktops, but to a specific monitor.  So for example if I
> set gaim to stick to the right monitor then no matter which desktop I
> select to be displayed on the right monitor gaim will be there.
> 
> This idea requires a lot more interface and functionality thought, but
> I feel it would be really neat and makes a lot of sense.  How do you
> feel about it? Does any of you other xinerama users feel this would be
> a good addition? I think it just makes sense in a virtual desktop
> based window manager.  You have many desktops, some are visible and
> some are not. You have two monitors so you can view any two of these
> desktops in any combination you want.  Maybe I'm nuts and this will
> actually be terrible usability wise...

Just for the record, yes - you are slightly nuts.  It also sounds like
exactly the functionality I know and love right now. ;-)  The only real
'drawbacks' to my current configuration is that I have 2 panels duking
it out for control of the config file, so when I change one I have to be
careful to change them both to keep my changes from being trounced. 
Additionally, applications are 'trapped' on the screen they're started
on.  This is actually an almost non-issue, as my habit is to run
email/gaim/firefox/OOo/etc on one monitor, and the usual explosion of
shells and editors that is my development environment on the other.

Perhaps an interesting approach is to let the window manager assign
certain desktops to certain monitors, then when you 'pin' an
application, it keeps to the set of desktops visible on that monitor. 
You'd still maintain the flexibility of moving things where you wanted
without restrictions, but keep things reasonably
structured/compartmentalized at the same time.

Then again, I could be smoking the same crazy-weed that you are..

  -P