compiz - Jun 2006 - Feature request: Multi-head awareness in compiz and plugins

There have been offered several patches in order to forward Xinerama
support to Xgl and patches for compiz to make use of it (like iXce's
ones, which were ignored).

So far the patched up compiz is working pretty good and makes it
effectively usable in such setups (aside of that those patches will
always drift away from official CVS and need to be touched for each
commit).

However it seems that there is the argument that the "Xinerama-Way" is
not the way to go. This might probably be true but on the other hand
there is no real information in what to approach instead afaik.

I guess there are people who would be interested in implementing such
"other" functionality, but (roughly) how should it be structured?
Which
parts would need changes? Where to contribute best?

As far as I can judge, it would be better to include abstract multi-head
aware code in compiz already than at any later version.

Doing it some months later, it would probably need changes to all and
everything (compiz iself, any future plugins).

A better approach if the Non-Xinerama way to handle multi-head setups is
not clear yet, would be to implement "abstract helper" functions to be
able to drop-in the multi-head functionality (kind of what the Xinerama
patches do with the "Head" functions/handling).

This way an unofficial "brached patch" for Xinerama could be easily
maintained along the official code by extending the helper functions
leaving all plugins rather untouched (more or less).

Once it is clear which underlying system to use for handling of the
heads it could be added rather painlessly within the "helper
functions"
instead of having to touch all plugins and compiz overall.

Of course the target should be to implement head handling at the proper
place (which is?) and make compiz use that information through it's API
but having the abstract functionality already would be for sure
progress.

Anyone else who would like to see this feature is asked to "vote"
reply
to this post of course! :)

As usual though, great work with Xgl/compiz!

--- Martin Szulecki

With composite extension present, xinerama isn't really useful, all we
need is support for multiple screens and we can do anything we want with
these screens in the compositing manager.

Adding multi-screen support to Xglx is easy, I'll try to get it done
this week. Making compiz multi-screen aware is some more work but I'll
start working on this any day now.

I wont accept any xinerama patches, if you like to use xinerama until
proper multi-screen support is implemented, you have to patch things.

-David

On Mon, 2006-06-19 at 13:26 +0200, Martin Szulecki
wrote:
> There have been offered several patches in order to forward Xinerama
> support to Xgl and patches for compiz to make use of it (like iXce's
> ones, which were ignored).
> 
> So far the patched up compiz is working pretty good and makes it
> effectively usable in such setups (aside of that those patches will
> always drift away from official CVS and need to be touched for each
> commit).
> 
> However it seems that there is the argument that the
"Xinerama-Way" is
> not the way to go. This might probably be true but on the other hand
> there is no real information in what to approach instead afaik.
> 
> I guess there are people who would be interested in implementing such
> "other" functionality, but (roughly) how should it be structured?
Which
> parts would need changes? Where to contribute best?
> 
> As far as I can judge, it would be better to include abstract multi-head
> aware code in compiz already than at any later version.
> 
> Doing it some months later, it would probably need changes to all and
> everything (compiz iself, any future plugins).
> 
> A better approach if the Non-Xinerama way to handle multi-head setups is
> not clear yet, would be to implement "abstract helper" functions
to be
> able to drop-in the multi-head functionality (kind of what the Xinerama
> patches do with the "Head" functions/handling).
> 
> This way an unofficial "brached patch" for Xinerama could be
easily
> maintained along the official code by extending the helper functions
> leaving all plugins rather untouched (more or less).
> 
> Once it is clear which underlying system to use for handling of the
> heads it could be added rather painlessly within the "helper
functions"
> instead of having to touch all plugins and compiz overall.
> 
> Of course the target should be to implement head handling at the proper
> place (which is?) and make compiz use that information through it's API
> but having the abstract functionality already would be for sure
> progress.
> 
> Anyone else who would like to see this feature is asked to "vote"
reply
> to this post of course! :)
> 
> As usual though, great work with Xgl/compiz!
> 
> --- Martin Szulecki
> 
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