Re: [RP] Ratpoison and Xinerama

[Cameron Patrick]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 11:07:10PM +1100, twb wrote:
| Quoth Cameron Patrick <address@hidden> on or about Tue, 25 Nov 2003 16:17:13 
+0800:
| > I would really like to see decent Xinerama support in ratpoison.  At the
| > moment I'm using an frestore command as described in the FAQ, which
| > works, but isn't ideal.  The 'only' command should affect only the
| > current monitor, and frames shouldn't be able to be removed/resized
| > across monitor boundaries.
| 
| I think you and I are the only (RP) people that use xinerama.  

Heh.  P'raps there was something in the water in Carine :-P

| Ahem.  RP is "The D.I.Y. WM": "you want it, you patch it".
| (Maybe we should put that on the T-shirts :-)

That's exactly what I did last night.

| I had another look at auto-xineraming last week, but there is a
| problem getting dox.  The xinerama CVS on sf.net is only up to v2.0,
| whereas my machine (xfree86 430) is using the *incompatible* 3.1.  Nor
| does my Xinerama know about XQueryExtension, which means that RP will
| crash if it tries to find xinerama and you don't have it.

Hmm.  I've been using the functions described in extensions/Xinerama.h
from XFree 4.3.0.pre1v4 and it seems to work fine, claiming to be
version 1.1.  The docs I've been using are that header file and the
sources to other window managers...

I've attached a simple test programme that uses all of the Xinerama
functions in the same way as my ratpoison patch does, and it should
produce output something similar to the below.  Tell me if it does or
doesn't on your machine...

$ gcc query-xinerama.c -o query-xinerama -lX11 -lXext -lXinerama -L 
/usr/X11R6/lib
$ ./query-xinerama
XineramaQueryExtension: evbase=0 errbase=0
Found Xinerama version 1.1
Xinerama is active
We have 2 Xinerama-managed heads

Head 1: 
        Xinerama screen number: 0 (hopefully should be 0)
        Top left corner:        (1600, 0)
        Bottom right corner:    (2752, 864)

Head 2: 
        Xinerama screen number: 1 (hopefully should be 1)
        Top left corner:        (0, 0)
        Bottom right corner:    (1600, 1200)

| I'd especially like it because I swap XF86Configs regularly
| (e.g. incompatible xin & 3d-accel).

There's an XFree patch that makes 3D acceleration with with Xinerama for
the radeon driver.  I haven't bothered trying it, though.

| I am, however, totally *against* (always) preventing cross-head
| windows.  Most of the time it's good, but sometimes it's bad.  Like
| rat warp, I guess.

I suppose so.  I haven't found a use for it yet.  It shouldn't be too
hard to modify my current Xinerama patch to allow this, if you're really
desperate for it...

| You can't easily base Xinerama heads on screens, because screens are
| almost separate displays.

Yes I bloody well can, I just did and have the patch to prove it! :-)

| I'd rather not have xinerama code based on screens because of the
| shortcomings that made me use xinerama in the first place.

Fair enough.  Write a patch (or help me) to sort out the shortcomings
then.  (Weren't you saying just a moment ago that the Ratpoison motto
was "you want it, you patch it?")

| How is it out of date?  Surely it's only debian/changelog that
| *CHANGES*.  I don't have any problem debuilding from cvs (for sid)
| after adding a dummy changelog entry.

Ah.  I shall confess that I didn't actually /try/ building from it :-)

Cameron.