Where to start? Implementing independent workspace switching with Xinerama

[Omari Stephens]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
::snip? SNIP!::
> The problem with switching workspaces independently with Xinerama is
> that Xinerama makes all monitors inolved into one big screen.  Don't
> look at it as having separate workspaces on each monitor that, for
> Xinerama, are just arbitrarily "locked" together.  They're actually one
> and the same workspace.
> 
> I suppose it would be possible to layer fake 'virtual' workspaces on
> top of that, and have them correspond to just the single monitor, but
> it would require changes to more than just the WM: xfdesktop would
> break, the pager would break, the taskbar would break, and possibly
> other DE-related apps would as well.  Doing this might also violate
> some standards (probably NETWM, maybe even ICCM [but probably just the
> former]).
For the record, I don't care too much about breaking usability standards 
that prohibit what I'm trying to do.  If there's a reasonable 
alternative that gives the same functionality, great.  Otherwise, ::shrug::

And since we've finally (I hope) gotten through the excessively long 
introduction to this topic, your comment about breaking things is 
exactly the sort of information I was looking for when I started this 
thread.  Specifically, I was hoping for hints on where to start, what to 
look at, what things will bite me, and if there are better ways to 
achieve the functionality that I want to achieve (which I think I 
described pretty clearly in my most recent email on this topic).

>> So another way to look at this, and perhaps an easier way (although
>> I don't know X well enough to say if it's at all feasible), is that
>> what is needed is a way to move windows from one display to another
>> (ie, from :0.0 to :0.1).  A perfect solution would support windows
...
This seems like it will be the more painful approach, given that it 
would be the applications themselves, rather than the window manager, 
which move the applications from one screen to another.

--xsdg