Hotplug: Turning off DisplayPort monitor also tears down its associated desktop.

[Michal Varga]

On Sun, 2015-03-15 at 00:11 +0100, Olivier Fourdan wrote:
> If Xorg is able to detect that the monitor got turned off, chances are
> that it will notify the running apps via xrandr and the desktop
> environment will adjust things accordingly, this is all perfectly
> normal and expected.
>[...]
> Again, this is the desired behaviour and not something that was
> changed in xfce-4.12 (previous versions did exactly the same)
> 
> So, to me, what you describe looks like a well written desktop :)


With all due respect, our expectations of 'normal' behavior apparently
highly differ in this. For the years I've been running XFCE on anything
from desktops to laptops, I've never even once encountered this issue
right until XFCE 4.12 was released. To me, this is a new problem that
didn't manifest at all until now (if that was a lucky major bug spanning
several XFCE version and several models and generations of computers I
ever ran it on, well, I guess that was a rather good and pleasant
accident for me).

That said, going into an unnecessary argument about what is the only
good, approved and correct behavior for end users and the only
sanctioned way of using their desktops would only bring us dangerously
close to the infamous GNOME3 grounds, so I'd preferably try to avoid
that and focus on finding a solution that could hopefully satisfy both
sides.

I can run about any window manager of my choosing (ok, I only quickly
tested a few, but still) without this behavior manifesting. I can also
apparently perfectly run xfwm4 along with xfce4-panel (when not having
the rest of the xfce compontents running) without this behavior
manifesting. All my desktops stay right where they are when any of the
monitors gets powered down (which for me, again, is an expected and
required behavior).

But for some reason since XFCE 4.12, I can no longer experience that
same behavior when the entire XFCE suite is running. I'm perfectly happy
to keep a local set of patches for whatever component is causing it (for
the time being until I can properly research moving to something else,
if this is an expected way for XFCE to behave), so - is there a way to
kindly point me to whatever it is that is suddenly responsible for
tearing down my entire displays when a monitor gets powered down *in
XFCE only*, so I can patch that component out, preferably without having
to resort to spending several months combing through the entirety of
xfce sources one by one?


> For example, if windows are left on an output which is gone, it means
> they won't be accessible to the user which is a problem, so xfwm4 will
> move them so at least a small portion of the window remains visible on
> whatever monitor is still present.

Honestly - that is actually *not* a problem as long as it's an expected
behavior. I work with multi-monitor setups spanning 10-15 workspaces on
average for multimedia and development workflows that at times don't get
shut down for *months*. It's perfectly reasonable to keep many sets of
open applications across different monitors and different desktops over
that time. The fact alone that a particular, for a moment unneeded
monitor gets temporarily powered off is *not* a reason to tear down its
entire workspace and reshuffle my windows onto different desktops. I
would literally never be able to use XFCE in this configuration if such
thing was ever happening to me before. Which it didn't.

m.



-- 
Michal Varga,
Stonehenge

Web site: http://varga.stonehenge.sk
Crypto ID: https://keybase.io/spash

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