_NET_WORKAREA and multiple monitors

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 08/04/2009 05:18 AM, Olivier Fourdan wrote:
>
> If NET_WORKAREA is not good enough, there is no obigation to use it
> either I guess and each tool can query the actual multiple monitor
> geometries. But then comes the struts, because struts and partial
> struts are per window... There is no real simple solution, but I could
> adopt an approach similar to what metacity does, at least it would be
> two similar implementations (I did not check other EWMH compliant
> window managers such as openbox, etc.)

Well, I don't want to try to convince you to change something that is 
actually reasonable.  I don't know what side effects there might be to 
such a change.

But then I question what _NET_WORKAREA is actually useful for (in a 
multihead environment, anyway).  It's certainly useful for avoiding dead 
areas, but it does so in a very sub-optimal way, by blacklisting 
non-dead areas in many situations.

I'm (grudgingly) fine with computing my own work area based on the 
struts and the real monitor geometry, but again I question if 
_NET_WORKAREA actually does anything useful for... anyone.  I'm going to 
use the same computation code in xfdesktop when I get around to it 
because _NET_WORKAREA is clearly insufficient there too.  It was a good 
idea, but I think is poorly specified.

For ease of parsing, I'd propose a new property that's of type CARDINAL 
and is a list of (x,y,w,h) quads, one for each visible rectangle.  This 
ditches the concept of having a different work area per workspace, but I 
can't believe anyone actually uses it.  I'm not sure if this kind of 
thing would be accepted on the wm-spec list, so I'm bringing it up here 
first.

Of course, as Nick says, it'd be a while before everyone supports it, so 
I'd still end up writing the silly computation code and copying it 
wherever it's needed.  Sigh.

	-brian