On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:07:04 -0400, Brandon Allbery wrote:
>> On Tue, 6 Sep 2011 04:02:39 -0400, Brandon Allbery wrote:
>> >> I don't understand why large desktop is not so much common[...]
>> > [...]
> While it was originally introduced to allow multiple monitor resolutions to
> coexist
Probably you're talking about RandR, and you're right. Another
XRandR came *much* later.
unfortune is that it's (also) poorly documented. Though I'm not sure
if meddling RandR to achieve large desktop is the best way...
The problem with doing it in the window manager is that a number of standard library routines that use the X server's idea of the screen extents now have to be reimplemented to use the window manager's idea of it. Back in the very early days of this, it was *usually* enough to recompile every program against a copy of <vroot.h> which replaced those routines... but then programs started getting fancier about how they made use of virtual root windows, and it started to require communicating with the window manager in complex ways, and suddenly you couldn't just hide it in an include file or a small library.
Old style virtual roots are still used by a few window managers, but it turned out to have enough problems as desktops become more complex that most window managers and desktop environments eventually dropped them.
freedesktop.org has legacy support for them still but most of its features require using server-side large roots and window layers instead.