[openbox] Two x displays (not xinerama) support

[Brian Mattern]

On Mon, 08 Aug 2011, Andrew Gallant wrote:

> After failing to build my own window manager (using Python), I am
> currently modifying Openbox to support the original idea in this
> thread: changing desktops on a per monitor basis. I've been wanting
> this feature for so long, and since I added a third monitor to my
> setup, I've found it to be nearly essential. It's going to be a bit
> more than a post-move hook :-)
> 
> As Mikael mentioned, this violates the EWMH spec and is essentially
> incompatible with all existing pagers. (I need to make one of those
> too.) I'm adding a new property called _NET_VISIBLE_DESKTOPS that
> should provide all the information an outside application (like a
> pager) needs. (Maybe I'll submit it to the EWMH people, but they
> haven't updated the spec in a long time...) The _NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP
> property is still relevant, I think.
> 
> Ideally, this should only change behavior on multi-head setups using
> Xinerama. Hopefully I'll make a public branch of Openbox available
> soon; I plan on keeping it up to date with Dana's master branch.
> 
> The only window managers I know of that exhibit this feature are
> Xmonad and i3; except the latter ties each desktop to a specific
> monitor that can't be used on other monitors. That is, only Xmonad
> gets this right in my opinion.


Enlightenment DR17 (www.enlightenment.org) implements
monitor-independent desktops as well. I once (as proof of concept)
forcibly implemented this type of behavior in compiz's wall desktop
switcher as well.  Unfortunately, I got too lazy to also go "fix" all
the other pager / switcher plugins in compiz, resulting in a thoroughly
broken desktop. (Then openbox cured me of compiz.)

I think that this feature is extremely useful, and would love to see it
added to openbox. It would be nice if
there were a standard way of implementing it so that external pagers
could get on board. (Although the topology of the "virtual desktop"
changes quite a bit compared to traditional xinerama, so some pagers may
simply not be compatible.)

Brian