Evince on multi-display systems

[Jan Skowron <jan skowron gmail com>]

Hi,
Evince is a great tool and its getting better and better all the time.
Actually I have quit using Adobe more than year ago when I saw how
evince is good when I have installed the new Fedora.

And now to the main topic:

In our institute most of people have multi display configurations, ie.
2 monitors, sometimes 4 monitors connected to one machine. And
different applications have different policy on which is the currently
active or main monitor to display content on.

I have figured out that evince is displaying window on the display
where the mouse currently is. This is pretty nice behaviour and many
users complain on this issue in other applications.
For example Firefox is opening popups on not-always right display, and
I presume that it is on left-most display or main display? Not the
current active one, the one I am looking now.
Same thing in Acroread, it starts always on main display, not 'active'
one. And nobody can do anything about it.

In evince there are 3 issues.

More important one is with presentations and the second display being
a projector. I would like to be able to set in the menu on which
display the presentation would go if I press F5 or F11.
This configuration is available in Acroread and Open Office Impress,
although not sufficiently thought. But still it is possible to have
control.
For most of presentations and lectures I make I use PDF format because
of constant compatibility issues between Powerpoint, Impress and
Keynote. And I would like to have a way of convieniently displaying it
from my computer on the projector.
Fullscreen mode and Presentation mode in Evince always goes on the
display I am currently on. There could be options like current:
display where the mouse is, current display where the evince window
is, the smallest display, tallest, widest, main display, display nr 1,
2, 3, 4 etc.... and some fallback for them as specified display is not
connected.
Thats way when I am connecting laptop to the projector. I can open
evince together with other opened stuff on my main (laptop) display.
And keep the projector clean. And than, with the new configuration,
pressing one button (F5) will start my presentation on the projector.
And still I will have a control on my main desktop with other
programs.

Other nice functionality on Open Office Impress is the ability to see
the preview of current slide, or preview of current and next slide on
the other screen. This is essential when laptop is standing near the
viewers and projector screen is far behind. Speaker would like to have
a preview on his small screen with no need to look and speak in
opposite direction from the listeners. Could it be made configurable
for users to decide where presentation goes and where, if on, the
previews go?

The third thing is the behaviour where the evince opens its windows. I
mentioned that this is usually on 'active' display, ie. where the
mouse is. But sometimes not. When I had some document opened on
display number 2, and closed it. Reopening of this document puts it
always on display 2. Option in preferences where I specify if I would
like to open documents on active display or last used by them display
would be nice.

One need to bare in mind that sometimes less used monitors are dimmed,
or there is another content displayed on them. For example now I am
using only my main monitor, and the secondary has something different.
If evince would open something on this currently unused display, I
wouldn't have a chance of seeing that. So having a control on where
the windows are opened is quite useful.
Next step would be the list of opened windows, and possibility of
showing then on current display and workspace, ie. 'here', this would
be nice.


Thanks in advance for any comments on these issues mentioned.
Best,
Jan