[ubuntu-x] [Gutsy] Should Xinerama be active when only a single monitor is connected?

[Dan Munckton]

On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 09:38 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> My initial guess would be that the call that reports Xinerama as active
> got replaced with Xrandr backend guts, which *is* active even for one
> screen.

Aha! It's all falling into place now. I'm looking at the file
randr/rrxinerama.c. In there is a function called
RRXineramaExtensionInit() which is called when RANDR itself is
initialised, and registers itself to handle all Xinerama calls.

> If it truly is Xinerama, and not Xrandr in disguise, then there should
> be no consequences to disabling it.  

Looking at it now I don't think the Xinerama/Panoramix code is compiled
in at all as it's disabled by default in the ./configure script. Plus I
added some ErrorF() print outs today and couldn't see any output in the
Xorg log.

> However, if my suspicion is correct
> and that it's actually Xrandr underneath, then this won't be possible;
> the Java code will need to be updated to allow for this new behavior.

I will go the awt-dev mailing list to ask about this. If the real
Xinerama doesn't load unless there are more than one monitors attached,
and only the Xrandr version runs with 1 monitor then I maybe Java could
check for numScreens==1 and then be brave and presume it's actually
Xrandr.

Thanks a lot for your help, I've been struggling away alone with this
since the day Gutsy went live, and it's preventing my colleagues and I
from upgrading cause we can't work on the product we're building.

Cheers

Dan