Re: xinerama and struts

[Mark McLoughlin <mark skynet ie>]

Hi Havoc,

On 12 Sep 2002, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> > 	This is actually a bug. The panel shouldn't be allowed on the
> > dividing line - its logged in bugzilla. There should only be 6 allowed
> > panel positions in that case.
>
> To me allowing the dividing line makes sense. Disallowing it is a punt
> solution that makes things easier to implement - which is fine with me
> - but I don't see anything _wrong_ with allowing the panel on the
> dividing line. It makes sense, if you are using the two monitors as
> effectively separate workspaces and only using xinerama rather than
> real multihead in order to enable moving windows between monitors.

	Well the way I thought about it was that with Xinerama it is
only a single workarea you have. That's why there isn't a desktop
drawn on each monitor, just one for all monitors. If we're going with
the model that each Xinerama monitor is a seperate workarea what do we
do about _NET_WORKAREA ?

	If we're going with a single workarea model, then it doesn't
make sense to allow the panel to split it in two ...

> > 	Because the "panel on the dividing" line is a non issue, at
> > least for GNOME, the issue is essentially the same as having a panel
> > that does not occupy a full strut - e.g. a floating panel - I'd much
> > prefer some sort of a partial width strut solution to the one above.
>
> Partial width struts (not bound to Xinerama) cause a lot of
> implementation complexity in the window manager because your "work
> area" suddenly isn't a rectangle - I'm almost inclined to handle
> corner panels by not setting the strut at all, or devising some way to
> use the strut only for maximization and ignore it otherwise, or
> something... partial struts bound to xinerama are easy because there's
> already a per-Xinerama work area to worry about.

	Hmm, well I'd imagine as far as _NET_WORKAREA goes, it would
ignore the fact that some stuts aren't the full width.BY far the most
reported problem I've seen is that if you have a panel on the top edge
of one monitor, you can't move a window to the top of the monitor
beside it ... This would be fixed with partial width struts.

> Basically with corner panels people seem to be trying to save some
> screen real estate vs. a full panel, so they want to be able to move
> stuff up next to the corner panel - what is the strut for then? Only
> maximization? Does that make any sense - I'm not sure?

	Hmm, well I don't see that the meaning of the strut has
changed - its still an area on the screen reserved by the dock - its
just specified more precisely ...

Good Luck,
Mark.