Switching between virtual desktops

[Luca Bezerra]

Well, I have no experience on any of the areas of the questions above, so my
answers will be based solely on my guessings and on what I've learned from
researching on the internet.

- You are potentially flooding applications with map/unmap requests
(due to the virtual desktop switching), but let's assume you have a
custom window manager which doesn't do that.
A: Ok, moving on...

- How will you ever get something async like the X protocol to
synchronize with this external hardware?
A: I had no clue about X being asyncronous, or about what that means on this
subject.. I'd really appreciate if you could give me more info about that :)


- Virtual desktops belong to a single user, how do you expect them to
behave nicely for multiple users?
A: I dont know if I didnt get what you meant, but here's the answer to what
I think you meant. The idea isnt of multiple logins sharing the same X
session (and their virtual desktops). What Im trying to do is to have a
unique user (lets say "John") logged in. After I log in as John, its like I
have simply 4 regular virtual desktops, each one with a browser open. The
system will work as if I were constantly switching the desktops. Let's say I
go to D1 and move my cursor 1/2", go to D2 and type letter 'a', go to D3 and
do "alt+tab" and then go back to D1 and move another 1/2", and so on. The
way I see, it'd be like a single person using multiple desktops really fast,
not really multiple users (at least the operating system wouldnt see it that
way, would it?).

- What about the mouse pointer, isn't it kind of expensive/slow to
render many software cursors on an old system?
A: As I said, based solely on my researches, I dont really think that would
be a problem. Existing (and functional) multiseat systems do use multiple
mice and keyboard and they get along pretty well...

- What happens to refresh rate?
A: Assuming you're talking about when I cut the image flow to one monitor
and switch it to another, how is that first monitor going to keep the image
in there while no image is really being sent to it, the answer is.. Well, Im
supposing I'll be able to switch between desktops so fast that I'll be able
to keep up with the refresh rate and with human eye's perception of image
change, so that the screen doesnt go black and the user doesnt notice his
screen is acting like a super fast slideshow (switching frames all the
time).
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