Xgl and Xinerama

[David Reveman]

On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 11:17 +0000, Colin Guthrie wrote:
> Jürg Billeter wrote:
> > It probably won't get to CVS. The plan is to let compiz handle multiple
> > screens instead of one screen with Xinerama as compositing managers can
> > do everything they want with these screens, according to David.
> 
> OK I guess that makes sense. I guess the nVidia driver will need 
> updating to handle this (I believe there is a problem with GLX on 
> multiple screen mode vs. TwinView mode in that you can only use it on 
> the first screen).

Xgl don't need this. In the Xglx case, Xorg can run in TwinView mode and
Xgl can create multiple screens on this single TwinView screen.

> 
> How does it handle the case where lots of applications are compiled with 
> Xinerama support and they suddenly can't do what they were designed to 
> do? I know the compositing mgr can do clever things with the multiple 
> screens in terms of layout and other gubbins, but surely the 
> functionality built into 100s of applications will then be lost?? Would 
> a psuedo Xinerama plugin be created to emulate what the apps expect but 
> on a multi-screen backend?

I don't think there's that many apps that are xinerama aware. Except for
the window manager, most apps will work just fine without the xinerama
info available. Some xinerama compatibility thing could be created if
necessary.

-David