Xinerama and Compose, Screen Placement Issues, other small things...

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 10/19/04 16:08, Rob Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 21:42:15 +0200, Olivier Fourdan <fourdan at xfce.org> wrote:
> > > Also, I've noticed some apps are having screen placement issues, as
> > > you can see here:
> > > http://kormoc.homelinux.org:8080/~kormoc/placement.jpg
> > > The picture window is raised up from the bottom and the titlebar is
> > > above the screen. It appears to be moved up as high as the task bar
> > > is, so it might be just a miscalc somewhere? The image in question is
> > > viewed using kuickshow. It's rather annoying cause I can't move the
> > > window down or anything.
> > 
> > Alt+click moves any window.
> 
> ok , cool, and I assume no one else is having these issues tho?

i've noticed something similar when VNCing to machines with a larger
desktop resolution than on the local machine.  it's kinda annoying; it
would be nice if xfwm4 would avoid placing windows such that their titlebar
is off-screen (unless the app requests it, of course).

> > > I've also wondered if there's a way to have a second panel and taskbar
> > > on the second xinerama screen and have it different then the one on
> > > the primary screen, if not, that would be a nice feature.
> > 
> > I think you can have that w/out Xinerama.
> 
> sure, but the questions is, can it be done with Xinerama now or not? :)

um, no.  that's essentially what olivier said.

> > > Also, I noticed that the software is not using ~/.config and ~/.cache
> > > for files, is that going to change once there's a final release?
> > > Because that seems rather iffy, no offence. You never know what other
> > > programs might use them.
> > 
> > We do use those.
> 
> Ya, but why? It seems to me that it's just asking for trouble, there's
> other programs that might use the directorys as well, and you already
> are using ~/.xfce4, so why not shove it all in there and be safe?

because the new standard is to use ~/.config for all configuration data
in an effort to reduce dot-file clutter in the homedir.  not many apps
use this yet, but eventually many will (hopefully).  at any rate, all
xfce-related data is in ~/.config/xfce4/, so it's not our fault if some
other malicious app uses the same filenames as we do.

> > > Hrm, one more thing. It would be nice to impliment something like
> > > ~/.xfce4/autostart or similar, and have it just run any program found
> > > in there. It would be a lot simplier then dealing with xinitrc files
> > > (gah, giving me headaches, no matter what I put in there, it won't
> > > work! :P) and be a lot easier to explain to users :)
> > 
> > We do run what's in ~/Desktop/autostart/
> 
> Hrm. Okay, I'll likly submit a patch to use .xfce4/autostart as well
> if there's no other reason against doing it.

why?  ~/Desktop/Autostart is sufficient.  a patch for this isn't likely
to be accepted, especially since we don't use the ~/.xfce4 dir anymore.

> > Are you sure you are running Xfce 4.1.90, because from the screenshot it
> > looks like 4.0.x (which doesn't use the composite extension, which
> > doesn't use ~/.confoig and ~/.cache, etc.)
> 
> Yes, I am postive I am, I could take another screen shot saying that
> it's 4.1.90 if you want. I can't enable the Composite extension as I
> said above, and if I was running 4.0.x, how would I even know that I
> have to deal with xinitrc in two places? (~/.xfce4/xinitrc and
> ~/.config/xinitrc)

if you had xfce 4.0.x installed to /usr, and then compiled and installed
4.1.90 without specifying a prefix, it defaulted to /usr/local, so it's
likely that you're still running 4.0.x if that's the case.  as olivier
notes, you're using the default 4.0.x xfwm4 theme, and xfwm4's compositor
is _not_ enabled in that screenshot, which either means you're running
4.0.x, or you didn't enable the compositor at compile-time (it's disabled
by default (or it is enabled, but X's composite extension is not enabled).

> > PS: I think you should really post this on xfce at xfce.org aimed at user
> > question, rather than xfce4-dev at xfce.org which is supposed to be
> > dedicated to the developpment of Xfce...
> 
> Hrm, I'm sorry, the idea was to find out some stuff and maybe write
> patches if I could, I'm sorry to waste your time then if that's not
> what this list is for.

it's just an on-topic issue.  we like to use the xfce4-dev list for
development-related issues, not helping users fix problems with their
setup.  also, there are more people subscribed to the xfce list than the
xfce4-dev list, so more people can benefit from any discussion resulting
from your user-related question.

	-brian