Multiple monitors, separate window lists

[thomasando]

I've got a dual monitor setup on my PC, running KDE 3.1.4, but there is one very slight annoyance that I can't get over. When I used to run Windows, I had a little app called Ultramon which allowed me to have 2 separate task bars (one on each monitor), and on each monitor, the taskbar only listed the windows the were open on that screen only, rather than the windows on both screens. What I want to know is if there's a way of replicating this behaviour in KDE - I have lived without it for near on 12 months now, but was just thinking today how nice it would be if I could get it working in Gentoo. It would be great to be able to look up at the taskbar and know which monitor I will find that window on (currently I look but I can't be sure which monitor to look at until I click it).

Any ideas?

[sgarbeil]

Are you using Xinerama? If you are, then no. Xinerama treats the displays as one.. So KDE doesn't know what window they are on. If you look on the control panel stuff you can figure out what monitor the taskbar goes on and all that. That is Kicker I think. It talks to Xinerama via DCOP so if you look in there you might be able to figure it out. Or there is an option in KDE to create two separate desktops with an environment variable , or it will do it automatically for you if you have two screens specified, and not Xinerama. I do this. sometimes. for Quake..
Windows handles multiple screens a little different then Xinerama. What you might be able to do is hack Xinerama to report which actual screen the window is on? For one thing the coordinate systems are reversed in Windoze, for another the video drivers, the window manager and the desktop are all integrated in one happy mess. X doesn't work that way.
You might be able to convert the co-ordinates to a screen and then write a little applet to tell you where it is (an X-trace should tell you) Or maybe grab a working pager app and see where you could build it in.
I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not built in, but I bet you could make something work without much trouble cause the pieces are all there.
Steve.

[thomasando]

well I have an nvidia geforce 4 ti 4800 card, running both of the monitors and using the nvidia drivers. IIRC the nvidia drivers use xinerama by default, so yes, I guess I am running xinerama.

When I go into the panels section of the KDE control center, there is an option to specify which xinerama screen the panel appears on. this is fine, specifying it there puts it on the right monitor - so I guess it would probably be possible to modify the taskbar applet to only be aware of its current desktop. only problem is, i'm a pretty hopeless programmer, and i wouldnt know what X environment variables to look at to be able to find out where it specifies the monitor, and I definitely wouldnt know where to look in the KDE source to even begin moidfying it, let alone what to do once I got there...

at least I know that it CAN be done, I just wish there was an easy way for it to work...

[sgarbeil]

There are a couple of very nice pagers out there -- the blackbox pager, for one, that can control location of windows. The problem is the level of abstraction. Kicker, the kde app that is the panel runs right on top of X. Pagers, applets, all that stuff get their info from the window manager so as not to muck things up.
Xinerama slips in between.
Also the Kicker doesn't work like I would expect. If it functioned correctly (per the abstraction) it should stretch across both monitors. So you actually have at least three problems:
1. The kicker taskbar applet is not what you want. It runs within kicker and the panel doesn't interface correctly with the window manager.
2. All of the possible options are not covered here. What if the window isn't displayed on YOUR screens or ANY screens but are virtual. X makes it possible to display any data at any location on your network.
3. The variables are not environment variables. They are going to be windows attributes.
My suggestion is to grab a copy of the openbox or blackbox pager code, then email the author and ask him if it's possible. Right now my linux box is non-functional (my own fault) so I can't but I will look and get back to you in a couple of days.
By the way, my day job is a simulation programmer. I write software that goes to various X display heads. It IS possible to do what you want, and shouldn't be too difficult.

The way (Generic quick ex:) an X server works it sends its data to an IP_ADDRESS:Display.Screen. Xinerama maps both monitors to the same screen number as an overlay kind of thing. With Xinerama you can set your desktop bigger than BOTH screens and scroll around if you like.
The functionality of the KDE desktop config tells me that it's broke. To work properly you should see a panel in both UNLESS the second screen is not mapped to the bottom. Now maybe they didn't want this in which case it's broken by design.
I took a quick look at the code for the kicker and decided that the mod you wanted would be counter productive (this means I don't understand it in programmer speak and might break the crap out of it) , hence the recommendation for pager.
I'll get back to you,
Steve Garbeil.

[dhdan]

*bump*

I am also trying to achieve the same config, without any clue as to what to do. I run Gnome, not KDE. Any suggestions?