Large virtual desktop space

[Peter "Firefly" Lund]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Luke Bigum wrote:

> Does anyone know if you can create a virtual desktop larger than the window
> dimensions? A friend of mine said he could get something similar by asking
> for a large screen resolution and then reducing it using xfree. I'm thinking
> along the lines of what can be seen in window managers like vtwm, where they
> get one big virtual desktop space and a single 'viewport' that can be moved
> around. does fdo x server support (or can it support with a bit of work) such
> things?

That's something the window manager handles.

Windows do not have the freedom to place themselves freely on the screen -
they must succumb to the will of the window manager :)

Every time a window wants to show itself or move to a particular position
the window manager gets to turn its thumb down or modify the position the
window actually ends up at.  That's how viewport/screen/virtual desktop
support is done.  This works with any X server.

XFree86 knows another trick: the actual, physical screen size may be
different from the apparent (to programs), virtual screen size.  The
effect is that you have a window onto a virtual desktop which you can move
around by bumping the mouse pointer against the sides of the window.  I
don't know if kdrive supports the same thing but in case, it's probably
not what you want.

-Peter