Re: Panel positioning on small screens

[gnome-list phred demon co uk]

On Fri, Jun 09, 2000 at 01:02:21AM +0100, Paul Warren wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Jun 2000 gnome-list@phred.demon.co.uk wrote:
> 
> > I'm running Gnome on my laptop; just upgraded to 1.2, which definitely runs
> > faster than whatever version I had before.
> > 
> > On to my problem: My laptop's screen is 800x600, but I use a virtual
> > scrolling screen at 1024x768. I find that this limits the usefulness of all
> > those nifty panel applets - most of the time they're off the screen, and I
> > have to mouse around to view them. What I really want is to be able to pin
> > the panels to the edges of the _screen_ rather than the desktop. Does
> > such a mechanism exist? If it doesn't, is it possible? 
> 
> If you're using X to give you your virtual desktop then no, not
> easily.  It might be possible, but it would be a bit hacky.  You'd need to
> get the panel to move every time you scroll, and it'd probably look a bit
> crumby.
> 
> A better solution would use your Window Managers virtual desktops.  The
> downside of this is that they probably won't scroll as smoothly.
> 
> Paul
> 

Hmm, so the desktop is scrolled by the X server and the layers above it
aren't aware of the movement. Still, even if one doesn't exist at the 
moment I'm sure it would be possible to generate an event for the WM.

I think a delay of 500msec before the panel position was updated would 
prevent too many panel moves. If you think about it, it's effectively 
the same as dragging a window around, which my system copes with fine. I
don't think it would look too bad.

I'll submit it as a wish and see what happens.

-- 
Paul W