9.10 regressions with dual-monitors

[Josef Wolf]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 09:46:14AM -0800, Bill Moseley wrote:
> How do I define where Gnome panels are displayed on dual monitors?

I was also hit several times by the randomness of the panel placement.

> I plug in a second monitor into my Thinkpad T60p.  The 2nd monitor is on the
> left of my laptop.  With 9.04 this worked perfectly and Gnome would place
> the top and bottom panels on the 2nd monitor (on the left) when connected
> and back on the laptop screen when the 2nd monitor was disabled.   Now the
> panels remain on the laptop screen all the time.

It gets even worse if the displays have different resolutions. If the panels
happen to be placed on the display with the lower resolution then there's no
way to reach them anymore since they are off the screen. Since you can't
reach the panels, there's also no way to start the display configurator
anymore to get out of the bad situation. Game over.

The next problem happens if the display with the higher resolution fails to
sync for whatever reason. Again, no chance to get at the panels anymore.
Game over again.

One improvement would be to have the panels on _both_ displays. Then you
would not get into the situation where you can not reach them anymore at
least as long as the display with the higher resolution is able to sync.

In addition, it would be desirable that the virtual display size would not
be expanded to a rectangle with a blind region when the displays have
different resolutions. No icons/panels/whatever should be placed in the blind
region that can not be seen/reached. Only visible/reachable regions should be
available for placement of the panels.

Or at least, there should be the possibility to scroll the blind region
somehow so items on it can be reached.

BTW: is there any way to force a given resolution if xrandr fails to auto
detect or auto-detects wrong settings?