Xgl and Xinerama

[David Reveman]

On Thu, 2006-03-09 at 12:07 +0100, Filip Nylund wrote:
> On 3/9/06, David Reveman <davidr at novell.com> wrote:
>         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
> 
> Any chance we'll see twinview/xinerama support in compiz anytime soon?

I'd like to avoid adding support for that. But you'll see support for
multiple screens sometime soon. :)


-David