Multihead fixes for the Panel - from my point of view

Joao Pedrosa joaopedrosa at gmail.com
Mon Oct 31 03:00:44 CET 2005


Hi Jasper and all,

When I first complained about the misbehavior of the Panel on my dual-head
system, Jasper showed interest in trying to fix the problems and he seems to
have worked hard on it, but it ended up fixing somethings and making other
things worse. For example, after the multihead fixes by Jasper, I couldn't
use anything on the second monitor because I couldn't load any application
window on it. So, current SVN is unusable for multihead systems.

As Jasper announced that he would need 3 weeks away to move to a new house,
I felt the need to give it a shot on first reversing the changes that he had
added and then trying to fix a little bit the Panel for multihead. In spite
of my ignorance of C/C++, the SVN history and my will to try to fix some of
the problems were enough to get a good multihead system for me.

Once I achieved a good multihead system for me, I worked hard not to lose
the changes while trying to get the "diffs" for you guys in case it can be
useful.

I know Jasper has his ideals for the Panel and are those ideals that have
made the Panel so great in the first place, but without a second monitor to
test the multihead support, it's much more difficult to get it working ok.
And until laptops come with two monitors, I know such systems will become
even "rarer". :-)

Ok, what I did:

- I have reverted back the changes for the multihead support that Jasper
introduced at around 23 of October;
- I have made the Panel ignore the monitor configuration of the Panel and by
default it will always use the DISPLAY environment variable, thus the Panel
is working like any other app which is great because it's always working the
way it should IMHO.
- I have added the support for unique Panel configuration directories for
each monitor. It seems to be working great together with the default
features of the Panel. See:

dewd at marieta:~$ ls .config/xfce4
display_0 display_1 mcs_settings xfwm4
dewd at marieta:~$

That's basically it! I have tested it and it's working great. I removed the
".config" and ".cache" directories and the Panel starts just great. I have
added and removed Panels and saved the Session, etc. All is great, with one
exception! I haven't tried to support the change of monitor of a Panel. I
just tried to change the monitor of a secondary Panel and it did go to the
other monitor and back, but the IconBox plugin just doubled the button
icons. So this support is buggy at the least, and whatever the way Jasper
decides to go, there is still work and test ahead.

I have taken two screenshots at different moments of the working multihead
Panel:

http://img494.imageshack.us/my.php?image=panelsworkingformultihead1ia.png

http://img500.imageshack.us/my.php?image=xfce43panels3we.png

I am attaching the diffs that I have created against the current SVN HEAD.

BTW, I have just seen the new Icon support of the Xfwm (it's on the second
screenshot) and it's great. Nice job Olivier. I am loving Xfce. Thanks.

Jasper, I hope your move to the new house goes well! Thanks as well. Great
Panel and great Xfce!

BTW, I'm attaching the script that I use to install Xfce SVN on Ubuntu
Breezy. Foxy once asked for "checkinstall" support and it has it, but the
script is highly experimental and needs manual configuration, so be careful.

Lastly, my C code may need adjustments, so feel free to fix it.

Cheers,
Joao
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