Re: Xinerama

[Michael Hennebry <hennebry at web dot cs dot ndsu dot nodak dot edu>]

On Sun, 23 Nov 2008, Yaakov (Cygwin Ports) wrote:

> I also think that there may be some potential flaws in windowed
> multiplemonitor mode that Xinerama support would fix.  While the current
> behaviour makes sense in multiwindow mode, I'm not sure that it does in
> windowed mode.  Since X window managers have no sense of what is really
> happening in that case, placing a dialog in the centre of the X display
> could easily land on the seam between two monitors.  (I know, I tried
> it.)  With Xinerama support, however, they would have the necessary
> information to DTRT.

This caused me to suspect that I'd misinterpreted some earlier mailings.
Further research increased said suspicion.
I'd like to make sure I'm following the conversation correctly.

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008, Yaakov (Cygwin Ports) wrote:
> -multiwindow means "hide the root window and use the internal window manager
> to integrate X windows with native windows"

"The internal window manager" means the one built into cygwin-xfree?
The root X-window, though invisible, can still receive X-events?

> -multiplemonitors means "I want one big X screen for this display to span all
> my monitors" and is on by default in -multiwindow mode

All pixels are presumed to be the same physical size and shape?
I remember reading somewhere that all the monitors had to have the same depth,
but not any other restrictions.
Messy things will happen if different monitors
interpret their pixels differently?
As a window has only one visual at a time,
a window that straddled such monitors would look messy.

Xinerama does something similar, but is more flexible?

> If you want -multiwindow mode, but only on 1 screen, something like "XWin
> -screen 0 @1 -multiwindow" should work.

IIRC someone suggested that one might want to do multi-monitor
with one monitor per X-screen.
That would be easier on window managers,
but would not allow moving a window from one monitor to another?

As I don't expect to grow another head,
this is more a matter of curiosity than anything else.

--
Michael   hennebry@web.cs.ndsu.NoDak.edu
"Pessimist: The glass is half empty.
Optimist:   The glass is half full.
Engineer:   The glass is twice as big as it needs to be."

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