New XFCE apps

[Len Ovens]

On Mon, March 4, 2013 7:29 am, lukefromdc at hushmail.com wrote:
> I have found that the GNOME tool for controlling xrandr works fine in
> gnome-shell, cinnamon, and icewm. In fact, when driver bugs in the
> xorg-edgers versions of the open source drivers made trouble on the
> activation of the second monitor, switching to icewm to change
> monitors, then back, was the workaround.
>
> It would seem to me that this tool should work in most DE's. The Arandr
> tool, by comparison, was a total bugfest when I tried it last year.

Aside from not having problems with Arandr (aside from it not saving in a
place where xfce could use it to start up with the next time).... There
are some cases I am not sure GNOME tool can help with.

In order for auto-setup at session start to work (this would be the case
of setup remaining after reboot), not only do we need the gnome tool to
work but we also need gconfd (not sure if the name is exactly right) to be
running all the time. xfce has it's own conf daemon running all the time.
SO at session startup both tools are trying to start the session. This
affects not only monitor setup, but every other session setting there is.
So there are then two processes running instead of one, there are two
settings managers, there are two sets of config files... and I am not sure
which ones would take precedence. A better display setup tool for xfce
would be better.

Assuming the first thing is not a problem... There are some cases you have
not mentioned. These cases happen to be the ones that cause the most
support questions on IRC... for me at least.
 - What happens if you boot at some time with only one monitor?
 - What happens if you then boot another time with the second monitor again?
 - want happens if the second monitor is unplugged mid session?
 - What happens if the second monitor is hot plugged?
 - What happens the first time a second monitor is plugged in?
       (either hot or cold)

These questions have nothing to do with whatever setup utility (GUI) plays
with xrandr or saves it's settings. This is about detecting that the
system has changed and using a reasonable setup as default or better yet
allowing the user to pre set up both instances. That is, the user says "If
I only have one monitor I want $this setup and if I have two, I want this
$other setup." The DE then switches between them on the fly. Basically,
how this works is that the user sets up there system for whatever HW
happens to be present. If the HW changes, then the DE saves the setup with
a list of HW and looks for another setup that matches the new reality. If
it finds one it uses it, if not it uses a reasonable default until the
user plays with it. The user might also be able to set some of the
defaults so that if a second monitor is plugged in the DE first tries to
the right, or superimposed. But if a setting has been saved with $x model
monitor, then it sets up to the right, bottom aligned.

This is so the person who uses their laptop at home with a second monitor
can have it to the right of their lap top, but if they use it to do a
presentation with a projector, that projector works superimposed or on
top. The idea that the user should have to fiddle each time they make
changes like that, which might be daily depending on use, the user has to
reset things up.... or make do.

dbus seems the best way to deal with this as I think it can be setup to
send a signal to a service on file creation (a new monitor should create a
device file) or maybe some other kind of event. (i still need to find out
how it can be detected the best) even better, if the service dbus wants to
send something to isn't running, it starts it... so the service can make
whatever changes and exit so it doesn't run all the time.

While the unity setup does come with reasonable (not the best IMO)
defaults, it fails the changing HW scenario as far as I can tell.



-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net