Subject: FVWM: Fvwm, the pager, and multiple screens (monitors)

From: Athanasius <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 23:55:01 +0100

Hi,
  I spent a few hours today getting my dual monitor setup under Linux
(Debian Woody) and XFree86, with fvwm2.

  What I've managed at this stage is the two monitors being treated as
seperate screens, running fvwm2 with thw -s switch so it only starts on
the primary, then calling another fvwm2 with minimal (no Init stuff)
from there.  Oh and Xinerama is configured on too.
  The upshot of this is two monitors work seperately, I can drag windows
between them *BUT* they are each using their own FvwmPager.  I would
greatly prefer if they were using the SAME FvwmPager, so that any
monitor can be displaying an arbitrary virtual desktop from my 3x2 set,
rather than any desktop from 2 completely different 3x2 sets.

  Is there any way to do this currently?  If not consider it a feature
request, even if it has to be with the limitation of not being able to
display THE same virtual desktop on both at the same time.  I really
don't need that myself anywya, and I doubt anyone else would.

thanks,

-Ath, who whould check the email archives for this list if they were
easily searchable, and did look in the FAQ.
-- 
- Athanasius = Athanasius(at)miggy.org / http://www.miggy.org/
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---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 12:34:52 +0200

On Sat, Apr 03, 2004 at 11:55:01PM +0100, Athanasius wrote:
> between them *BUT* they are each using their own FvwmPager.

As far as I understand Xinarama and multi-head, the setup you
describe is not possible.  Either you are running Xinareama and
*one* fvwm, or you have a multi-head setup and one fvwm for each
screen.  With Xinerama you can move windows to all video screens,
with multi-head you can't.

Can you please post:

 - the relevant parts of you X config
 - the lines you use to start fvwm
 - all Xinerama and Desktop settings from your .fvwm2rc

I need this information tu understand what you are doing.
 
> I would

Ciao

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

---

From: Athanasius <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 11:50:00 +0100

> with multi-head you can't.

  Yes, I got confused when fiddling things around attempting to get the
setup I wanted.  I do indeed have Xinerama off, as when on that just
gives me a double-width desktop across the two minitors, which isn't
what I want.

>  - all Xinerama and Desktop settings from your .fvwm2rc

  Files attached.  Note I've switched to NOT using -s on the fvwm in
.xinitrc, and am instead using a "Read .fvwm2rc.<screen number>" in
~/.fvwm2rc and the relevant files in ~/.fvwm/ to get different Init
sections for the two fvwm2 instances.

> I need this information tu understand what you are doing.

  If recoding is needed I'd guess that the setup would be:

	1) Xinerama *on* so that windows can be moved between screens
	2) fvwm2 code changed to treat the two screens as seperate
	virtual desktops instead of as one double-width one.
	3) FvwmPager code changed to specify independently which virtual
	desktop is displayed on either screen.

The basic thing is to NOT have the two screens forming one virtual
desktop and to have a single FvwmPager for controlling what is displayed
on the seperate virtual desktops/screens.

thanks,

-Ath

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 14:56:25 +0200

> 	desktop is displayed on either screen.

Hm, these two are very difficult to achieve because it's exactly
the point of Xinerama to treat both screens as a single entity.
I'm not saying it is impossible to do, but it is *a lot* of work.
We'd need to reparent windows in a separate 'root' window for each
screen to be able to handle them independently.  As a side effect
it would become impossible to move windows from one screen to the
other smoothly.  Then the module interface would have to be
adapted to handle not just a single desktop, but an array of
desktops - one for each screen.

> on the seperate virtual desktops/screens.

Well, there may be a different way that does not really use
desktops.  Configure a key to cycle all windows on one of the
screens to a different desk, e.g.

  key f1 a n all (CurrentScreen) movetodesk +1
  key f1 a s all (CurrentScreen) movetodesk -1

Now, pressing f1 moves all windows on the current screen up by one
desk and shift-f1 moves them down.  This works only with the
latest code from cvs beccause of a bug fix I made.  It's not
perfect either, since you can not separately switch 'desks' with
the pager.

Ciao

Dominik ^_^  ^_^