screenmanagment review :-)

[Gustavo Pichorim Boiko]

Hello

Em 02/09/2008, às 10:02, Aike J Sommer escreveu:

> Hi,
>
> i have the feeling that my gsoc-project finally is in a state, in  
> which it
> could be made ready for trunk... So i wanna get a discussion started  
> on what
> still needs to be done or what should be changed! :-)

Good to hear that :)

> The current state is:
> - there is a daemon (kephald) which will monitor xrandr events and  
> change
>  configurations accordingly
>  - each set of connected monitors will be saved along with the last  
> used
>    configuration for them
>  - if a known set of monitors is plugged in, that saved  
> configuration will be
>    loaded and applied to the monitors (that includes position, size,  
> rate,
>    rotation, reflection)
>  - if unknown monitors are plugged in a default configuration will  
> be loaded
> - theres a library (libkephal) which wraps kephald's d-bus api,  
> which is split
> in 3 parts:
>  1) screens: the individual areas available for apps, eg what plasma  
> needs
>      for deciding where to put a desktop-containment
>  2) outputs: the actual outputs and its connected monitor, needed for
>      configuration of those
>  3) configurations: the configurations, these have a unique name and  
> can be
>      used for context
> - theres a dataengine, holding most of the available information from
>  libkephal, including jobs for actions like move, resize...
> - theres a (very basic) applet for managment of screens, it allows  
> for:
>  - moving of an output
>  - resizing of an output
>  - reverting or confirming the change
>  - its not really well tested yet and still lacks lots of possible  
> settings
>
> There is currently only support for xrandr 1.2, but xinerama support  
> is
> already started locally... If xrandr is not available it will just  
> fall back
> to using QDesktopWidget for screen-information, so it should still  
> behave
> kind of sane!! ;-)
>
> My currently planned next steps would be:
> - compile time checks for xrandr 1.2

In krandr I have done this, so it might be a good idea checking it  
there.

> - xinerama support

The only thing that should be taken care of is not to mix real  
xinerama with fake xinerama (which provides randr1.2 info). I don't  
really know what happens if you use a xinerama setup for two cards  
that have more than one output each.

> - maybe nv-control support
> - work on the applet
> - use as much of the applet as possible to create a kcm
>
> What would be needed in plasma:
> - make plasma listen to libkephal's signaling about screen-changes  
> instead of
>   qdesktopwidget
> - use the configuration-name for context
>
>
> There's also a techbase page, where i put some more infos:
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/ScreenManagement
>
>
> Now... Would be nice to get as much input as possible... :-)
> One of my open questions would be: Should kephald be converted into a
> kded-module?

I would say it is a good idea, as kded is already in place for that  
purpose.

> And of course: What do or dont you like?
> What did i forget?

I might have missed this, but where is the source hosted? I want to  
take it a look.

> What ideas do you have?

Your work seems very complete from my point of view.
The only thing I could think about was to do some integration with  
kwin's effects, to add a fade-to-black and fade-from-black effects  
when switching outputs' parameters to make the transition look more  
smooth.

Besides that, I guess the work on this stuff is following a good way.

Congratulations for the job!

[]'s

Boiko