[openbox] Multiple screens not considered correctly in Openbox-3.0-rc3

Kacper Wysocki kacperw at online.no
Fri Oct 10 04:15:15 EDT 2003


> > The new feature in rc3, the black frame border while window cycling   
> > was a very nice idea indeed.

> It's really stolen from metacity :) I can't take credit for it.

It's still very nice, and I know you implemented and released it within  
three days of hearing of it. Or is it a pure cut-n-paste job? ;-)

> Ya, use xinerama, there is no support for dual head in non-xinerama  
> setups. Changing this would be extremely non-trivial at this point so  
> its going to stay that way. However, take heart, Openbox is pretty  
> smart about xinerama, and ideas for further smartness would be  
> appreciated.
[snip]
> Running 2 Openbox's does not work. They end up fighting over focus  
> since they both keep losing track of the focus (since it disappears  
> off to the other screen).
> 
> Sorry, you'll have to learn to love xinerama or run Openbox 2 or
> something.

Okay, so I'm "learning to love" xinerama, for now.

I'm sorry to hear that there will be no non-xinerama openbox 3. Running  
openbox 2 again is impractical, since I now have some applications (for  
example gDeskCal) that don't work with ROX' compatability mode, and old  
openbox doesn't work properly without rox' compatability mode.
Um, I assume a developer for a xinerama-supporting window manager uses  
xinerama on a daily basis for his work?
The biggest trouble with xinerama isn't that window managers aren't  
trying to be smart about it, because most are, but that X applications  
are super-dumb about xinerama. In a common xinerama setup where the two  
screens aren't the same model, one screen will invariably run at a  
higher resolution than the other, resulting in rox, and other  
applications attached to the bottom of the screen to disappear into the  
deadzone created by the difference in resolutions. I haven't seen any  
windowmanager handle this properly, which makes me think maybe this is  
a xinerama limitation.
A second problem is that some applications adjust their initial width/ 
height according to the desktop area, which makes for some pretty  
ridiculously x-stretched windows. Maximising a window over two screen  
is fun, but confusing and perfectly useless.

Lastly, sort of on a side note, openbox has some issues with certain  
applications maximising/restoring in xinerama. At least 4 out of 5  
times openbox will crash if I fullscreen, then restore, then fullscreen  
again a movie in xine, colorfully stating:
"Fuck yah. Core dump. (Signal=11)"
Where did this core go, anyways? (Ideally, though, xine would play the  
movie in duplicate on both screens at once. Irrelevant, since I'm  
pretty sure this is driver-depenent and has to do with the way video  
overlay works.)

Sometimes a window will maximise to a different screen than it's  
running on. I guess it must be a focus thing, but I'm not quite sure.  
It's hard to consistently reproduce these bugs.

I'll certainly try working with xinerama and keep posting any  
difficulties I have here, if it helps.

Regards,
Kacper



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