Initial XWin desktop placement

Initial XWin desktop placement

[JOEL.MOOTS]

Hi,

I feel like this question was answered on the list previously but could
not find it. I run XWin with two screens on multiple monitors (i.e.,
"XWin :4 -nodecoration -multiplemonitors -screen 0 1600 1200 -screen 1
1600 1200") and at one point got it to remember to place both screens on
my secondary monitor. After switching my monitor setup recently, it now
always pops up the screens on my primary monitor. I've searched my
registry (for cygwin and xwin) but could not find where it was storing
the initial locations. After moving the screens to where I want them,
I've tried various means of shutting down XWin.exe but it does not
remember the locations. This is a Windows XP machine, if that matters.
Any help would be appreciated,

TIA,

-joel moots

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Re: Initial XWin desktop placement

[Jonathan Conrad]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:49 AM,  <JOEL.MOOTS@l-3com.com> wrote:
...
> always pops up the screens on my primary monitor. I've searched my
> registry (for cygwin and xwin) but could not find where it was storing
...

I would love to become an expert on the subject of Cygwin and X and
Windows XP but am becoming more out of touch, as it were. I recently
followed a link from this mailing list to get started with the
Cygcheck utility and noticed that there are more than a couple of
entries in the registry. Anyway, as Cygwin is a sort of a POSIX
environment, there is very little dependence on the message-driven
paradigm of Windows programming and even less on the registry and
problems with case-insensitivity and registered filename extensions.
Server processes (such as the X Window System) are configured with
text files which are mainly located in your home directory and the
"C:/cygwin/etc" and /usr/share and /lib folders. It is unfortunately
beyond the scope of an Linux emulator to fathom all of the facilities
of X. Hopefully, another reader will tell you more exactly where to
start.

I'll be back.
- http://facebook.com/FNORDLY

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Re: Initial XWin desktop placement

[Jon TURNEY]

On 13/04/2011 15:49, JOEL.MOOTS@L-3com.com wrote:
> I feel like this question was answered on the list previously but could
> not find it. I run XWin with two screens on multiple monitors (i.e.,
> "XWin :4 -nodecoration -multiplemonitors -screen 0 1600 1200 -screen 1
> 1600 1200") and at one point got it to remember to place both screens on
> my secondary monitor. After switching my monitor setup recently, it now
> always pops up the screens on my primary monitor. I've searched my
> registry (for cygwin and xwin) but could not find where it was storing
> the initial locations. After moving the screens to where I want them,
> I've tried various means of shutting down XWin.exe but it does not
> remember the locations. This is a Windows XP machine, if that matters.

The description of the -screen option in 'man XWin' should clear all this up.

XWin doesn't store the position of the screen windows anywhere, it places them
where you request them.

If you just specify a height and width and no position in the -screen option,
the screen window is placed at the top-left of the Windows virtual desktop.

I guess perhaps you've switched from a setup with the primary monitor on the
right to one with the primary monitor on the left, hence the window is now
located on your primary monitor?

(It could perhaps be made clearer that a normalized coordinate space is used
for specifying the screen window position, where (0,0) is the top-left of the
Windows virtual desktop, which is not the same as the Windows virtual desktop
coordinate space (which has (0,0) at the top-left of the primary monitor), to
avoid negative coordinates.)

To place a screen window on the secondary monitor, I'd suggest you use the
syntax '-nodecoration -screen 0 @2'.

(You shouldn't need to use -multiplemonitors, as it isn't doing anything much
for you, since all it should do is set the size of screen 0 to match the
Windows virtual desktop, which you are then overriding with an explicitly
specified screen size, but experimenting a bit, it looks like there is a bug
at the moment, in that, when -multiplemonitors isn't specified, the screen
window size is always constrained to fit the usable area of the primary
monitor (rather than the usable area of the specified monitor), so you will
need to specify -mutliplemonitors and the window size if you want a screen the
same size as your secondary monitor and your secondary monitors is larger than
your primary monitor, e.g. '-nodecoration -multiplemonitors -screen 0
1600x1200@2'.)

-- 
Jon TURNEY
Volunteer Cygwin/X X Server maintainer

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RE: Initial XWin desktop placement

[JOEL.MOOTS]

> From: Jon TURNEY
> Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2011 9:47 AM
> To place a screen window on the secondary monitor, I'd suggest you
> use the
> syntax '-nodecoration -screen 0 @2'.

Wow. I don't see that @ syntax listed in the man page for my very
outdated Cygwin/X, and that's obviously not how I got it to "remember"
before, but you just made my day!

Thank you very, very much,

-joel

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