Release schedule clarifications

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday 25 October 2007, Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> > > Last but not least: The panel doesn't expand over both screens, but
> > > also
> >
> > it's not supposed to
>
> So I can't have it expand over both screens? :( I like that feature in
> kicker very much.

no, the concept is broken in many ways. for one, if you have two monitors with 
different resolutions, then at which coordinates do you position the panel 
exactly? when doing things like "show only windows on current screen" in a 
taskbar where the taskbar is split between screens, what do you do? what 
about odd scenarios where the monitors are not left-right but top-bottom?

multi-screen panels work in pretty much exactly one configuration: panel at 
the top or bottom with 2 or more monitors with the same resolution in a 
left-to-right configuration. they break in every pretty much every other 
case.

moreover, it keeps the code much more simple when it comes to things such as 
figuring out panel overlap/stacking/growing, the difference between vertical 
and horizontal panels, ensuring that applets don't hang halfway between 
screens, etc... it's also one less option to take into consideration when 
managing panel geometries.

you can, of course, put a panel (or multiple panels) on each screen. this is 
actually what i ended up doing when i used to have a xinerama set up at work. 
even with kicker it worked better that way.

the only thing that works better with one panel on multiple screens is that 
you could drag applets along the width of a panel without doing an external 
drag and drop; so .... a fairly trivial improvement that isn't overly 
annoying in the best of times.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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