[KDE Usability] Display Management Design

[Matt Rogers]

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Alex Fiestas <afiestas at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi there fellows: metalworkers/plasmafiers?/usabilitiers? xD
>

that would be designers to you ;)

> Today we've started to draft what is going to be another Solid project,
> this time to improve the Display Management.
>
> As you may know, I have been working to fix the current code but as
> happened to me before (KBluetooth) I can't improve the existing codebase
> any further, so it is time to rewrite it.
>
> Also, as occurred in the KBluetooth times, after fixing it now I have a
> clearer idea of what we want and how we want it, and of course being a
> hard user of "Multi Display's" helped.
>
> So, this is the design so far:
> http://community.kde.org/Solid/Projects/DisplayManagement/Design
>
> Everything is open to changes, just say it and if everybody more or less
> agree it will be changed.
>
> Also, I'd like to consider this the first step towards KDE5 workspace,
> uh oh what, I'm crazy? yes I'm :D
> We've to update our guidelines about KCM's and unify them, right now all
> we have is a mess :D
>
> We have time to discuss the design I have a lot of work to do until I
> start to do the GUI bits.
>
> Cheers!

So I've read through this several times and, in general, it gets it
right most of the time. However, I have a few questions.

Does the dialog that pops up when a new display is connected only
displayed when the monitor isn't something that's already been
configured at least one?

Why does there even need to be a dialog at all? Why not just activate
the display to the right of the current display and set it to the
preferred resolution? If it needs to be changed, then it can be done
through the KCM.

The current KCM mockup is too crowded. I don't have a new  mockup for
this, but IMHO, it makes more sense to split the KCM up into two tabs.
One with display arrangement, the other with display configurations.
I'll see what I can come up with in the next few days for this but
don't count on anything.

Will plasma start recognizing the dual display setup as one giant
screen and set the wallpaper to the new screen to the same as the
current screen? If not, it should.

Regarding the force dpi question, we should just "force" the DPI to be
the same as the existing screen so there are no issues with font
rendering between the screens.

My two cents. Would love to hear others.

Thanks,
Matt