Re: FVWM: fvwm and multihead displays ?

From: Dominik Vogt <fvwm_at_fvwm.org>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 12:41:27 +0200

On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 12:59:28PM +0200, Stephane Rosa wrote:
>
> On 20-Sep-2001 Dominik Vogt threw those bytes in the wire :
> > On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 09:45:28AM +0200, Markus Grunwald wrote:
> > > Hi !
> > >
> > > quite soon, I'm going to buy a new graphics card. The multihead
> > > capabilities of some cards seem interesting, but I wonder how I can use it
> > > with X, specially with fvwm2.
> > >
> > > What possibilies do I have ? Can I for example run one seperate fvwm-desk
> > > on each screen ?
> >
> > First, you need an X server that supports multi head displays.
> > Most commercial UNIXes have one (but I can't tell you how to
> > configure it). XFree 4.x has multi head and Xinerama support
> > (you'll want the most recent version you can lay your hands on).
> >
> > Second, you need a supported video card. If you intend to use two
> > video cards with XFree, there is or was a big problem in getting
> > the second card initialised (the BIOS does not do this). I tried
> > a number of different card and could run a dual screen setup only
> > with two Matrox cards. If you want to buy a single card with dual
> > monitor support this shouldn't be an issue.
> >
> > Third, you have to decide wether to use Xinerama or traditional
> > dual screen. Xinerama treats both screens as a single big one and
> > fvwm manages both screens. Xinerama support is new in 2.4.1.
>
> Hey! I didn't know about that. What exactly is the support
> provided to xinerama ? I mean what would be different than
> using any WM with xinerama since the WM just sees that there
> is one X server and it's huge ?

Fvwm knows about the screens of a Xinerama display and makes sure
that windows and icons are not placed between the screens or in
blank areas that are not part of any screen. Also, there are a
lot of new commands and options to handle Xinerama. For example
the is a new MoveToScreen command, and the X geometry format takes
an optional '_at_screen' argument to denote the screen, e.g.

  -0-0_at_1

refers to the lower right corner of screen 1. For further details
have a look at the 2.4.1 man page and the NEWS file.

> > If you don't have Xinerama you have to use two screens. This
> > works basically the same, but you can't move windows between the
> > screens and have to start a separate fvwm on each screen (fvwm
> > does this by default if it detects multiple screens).

Bye

Dominik ^_^ ^_^

-- 
Dominik Vogt, email: d.vogt_at_lifebits.de
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Received on Thu Sep 20 2001 - 06:38:08 BST

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