multi-screen management

[Marco Martin]

On Wednesday 18 August 2010, Chani wrote:
> On August 18, 2010 03:15:13 Marco Martin wrote:
> > On Wednesday 18 August 2010, Chani wrote:
> > > so... we had planned to have a little tool for managing the
> > > containments of multiple screens, in 4.5 - but there wasn't time.
> > > multiscreen has improvements, but also regressions - well, *a*
> > > regression - you can't access the containment of a screen that's not
> > > plugged in. the same applies to the per-desktop view stuff (they have
> > > a lot in common).
[...]
> > > Oh, and as for where to go to open this UI: well, it has to run
> > > in-process, but it's not common enough to warrant a toolbox entry, so I
> > > had a crazy idea: what if whatever kcm is relevant to this stuff
> > > (plasma settings + wherever the PDV setting lives?) had a button that
> > > sent a dbus signal to plasma-desktop to show the UI?
> > 
> > i think should be reachable from the activity manager (either right
> > click, another action icon, whatever)
> 
> it's not related to activities, though. it's just made necessary by the way
> I did the activities.

yes, but still i think is the logical place to reach it

> > > TODO: clean up the above rambling into a more structured document. :)
> > > 
> > > [edit]Under the Hood
> > > 
[...]
> > 
> > uhm, i think the authority shuld just be corona, but in case of
> > plasma-desktop corona use the Activity to make the decision...
> 
> well, right now the corona isn't the authority on anything. and for non-
> running activities, the containments' settings are the only authority.

yes, i think the containments eing a source of authority for themselvescan be 
potentially problematic

> > > * Might it be easier to leave the config in plasma-desktop-appletsrc,
> > > and have the startup loading skip containments assigned to nonexistant
> > > screens/desktops?
> > 
> > in the end, where you have the configuration is the same thing, depends
> > if it's ever wanted having running containments not associated with
> > screens. the exceptions are the mobile and netbook launchers, but they
> > could have -1 (instead of a number > than available screens)
> 
> no, any containment that was never associated with a screen will be
> completely ignored by all of this code. :)
> also... at the moment, code that wants to work with desktop containments
> checks whether a containment is in offscreenwidgets in order to skip any
> dashboards.
> 
> > > * Once this is implemented, I believe panels should behave the same
> > > way, instead of migrating. It's more consistent that way. thoughts?
> > 
> > agree
> > 
> > > * It'd be nice to investigate whether any delay would be helpful - is
> > > it likely for several screen changes to happen within a few seconds?
> > > either from drivers being fidgety or from a loose cable or something?
> > > I don't know enough to be sure.
> > 
> > yes, two things likely to happen
> 
> do we have any evidence for this, though? do you *think* it's likely or
> *know* it's likely? :)

at the moment just thinking it's likely

Cheers,
Marco Martin