[CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

linux_user · 2019-03-13 06:18:05

When using multiple monitors, unplugging the secondary or tertiary monitors doesn't bring back their windows to the primary monitor unless you go to the settings and uncheck the 'active' status of the other monitors.

An ideal behavior would be to immediately bring back all the windows to the primary screen to give user feedback in case secondary or tertiary monitors are unplugged for whatsoever reason to give user feedback in case any of the active displays gets unplugged/loses connects etc...

What do you guys think? If this community favors this feature, I shall go and raise an issue in their repository in Gitlab.

Last edited by linux_user (2019-04-07 06:15:38)

iMBeCil · 2019-03-13 10:07:54

^The arandr takes care of single/multiple monitor layouts in a simple GUI way. In u nutshell, it is GUI wrapper for 'xrandr'.

In unix parlance, it does exactly one job, and does it perfectly.

What you want/suggest is a 'daemon', which will listen for (I presume) kernel messages, and act accordingly. I very much doubt arandr, as being simply a wrapper for xrandr, will want to incorporate such functionality, as it is quite different as what arandr (and xrandr) does at the moment. (I.e. it is not simply adding a few lines of code to arandr, it is completely different thing to program.)

The functionality you suggest should be probably delegated to another tool, which - I suspect - already exsits in one form or another, for example as a part of more advanced desktop managers.

In this respect, I doubt the arandr devs will go for your suggestion. Furthermore, it would additionally increase arandr codebase, making it 'a bloat', and I - for one - would remove arandr package and search for simpler one ...

Having said that, you are of course free to try to ask on arandr feature suggestion place ... Anyway, that's only my opionion.

EDIT: the way to implement your idea is to write small program which will look out for connecting/disconnecting monitor, and then this program ('daemon') should start arandr (or more probably xrandr) when monitor ir (dis)connected, with appropriate settings, resulting in rearrangement of windows across monitor(s).

Last edited by iMBeCil (2019-03-13 13:33:10)

linux_user · 2019-03-14 15:41:24

iMBeCil wrote:

^The arandr takes care of single/multiple monitor layouts in a simple GUI way. In u nutshell, it is GUI wrapper for 'xrandr'.
In unix parlance, it does exactly one job, and does it perfectly.
In this respect, I doubt the arandr devs will go for your suggestion. Furthermore, it would additionally increase arandr codebase, making it 'a bloat', and I - for one - would remove arandr package and search for simpler one ...

Sure, it does one job, but not sure if it does it perfectly. I would say so only when it's also able to handle (or the very least, report) faults of the very components it's handling.

For instance, when we are copying a set of files to an external hdd/usb stick, and we unplug it during the process, the system doesn't stay mute. Instead it throws a notification/error/message.

I like lightweight programs, and they have to be fully functional, not half. What I am proposing is not another feature/functionality, but rather a completion of an existing feature. Technically it might be a new feature to build (as you mentioned), but from a 'solution to a problem' perspective, it isn't.

I don't think a few lines of code that'll only make the program 'complete' be called as 'bloat'.

iMBeCil wrote:

Having said that, you are of course free to try to ask on arandr feature suggestion place ... Anyway, that's only my opionion.

Sure, I just thought I'd ask here first and then post it there. It's always good to discuss within your first circle before going out.

Jimbo_G · 2019-03-14 19:26:45

I don't know how or if it could be done, but this feature would be of interest to me as I sometimes use a projector.

iMBeCil · 2019-03-14 22:40:10

linux_user wrote:

Sure, I just thought I'd ask here first and then post it there. It's always good to discuss within your first circle before going out.

Of course, it is always good to listen to other opinions

I would just like to reiterate: arandr is a GUI wrapper to xrandr. As such, I think it wasn't meant to be a complete solution to the problem of autodetecting (dis)connection of monitor(s), nor is xrandr meant to be ... that.

But, good luck with arandr maintainers ... let us know the result.

Last edited by iMBeCil (2019-03-14 22:40:50)

linux_user · 2019-03-15 06:12:45

iMBeCil wrote:

I would just like to reiterate: arandr is a GUI wrapper to xrandr. As such, I think it wasn't meant to be a complete solution to the problem of autodetecting (dis)connection of monitor(s), nor is xrandr meant to be ... that.

Just for the discussion and not argument

I might have a different perspective that 'autodetecting (dis)connection of monitor(s)' is just the part of the problem, not the problem itself. The 'problem' is 'the handling of multiple displays' (in which case, the detection, the interface to choose which is what and handling fault is inclusive.)

Also, any solution/feature/patch should be available for all interfaces whether CLI or GUI. If we are (assuming developers agree) going to have this in arandr, then it only makes sense that xrandr has it too. And since I think this is a fundamental requirement, all the more reasons for me to think that xrandr should implement it too.

iMBeCil wrote:

But, good luck with arandr maintainers wink ... let us know the result.

Just rehearsing my points here first

iMBeCil · 2019-03-15 10:59:12

I see and understand your point. But, in the light of

linux_user wrote:

Just rehearsing my points here first

I would argue that, considering that someone has installed arandr along xrandr, and another person may have only xrandr, and various ways how kernel/graphics notification works, I feel it would be much more natural to delegate detection of monitor (dis)connection to separate application ('daemon'). Of course this 'daemon' would have to be configurable in a sense that you could tell him what to run (arandr? xrandr? something else?) after monitor have been (dis)connected ...

Actually, there are some ideas about it: this, resulting in udev-monitor-hotplug. Therefore, it seem almost solved, you can set it up for yourself with ease (I wish I have more knowledge of udev and more time to check how it works ...)

ohnonot · 2019-03-15 19:08:02

the feature may be desirable, but it is not arandr's task to provide it.

you have options:
- use a more advanced tool, probably as part of a full-blown desktop environment
- implement it yourself with one or more udev rules

Jimbo_G · 2019-03-25 15:28:41

ohnonot wrote:

- implement it yourself with one or more udev rules

For anyone like me who doesn't know about udev rules I found the following post which might be of some help (even if it is for i3):

https://frdmtoplay.com/i3-udev-xrandr-h … switching/

I'm mainly leaving this here for my future reference, I'm unlikely to get any time to look into this for the next few months. It would be cool if it worked although it is a very minor annoyance for me.

linux_user · 2019-04-03 12:52:55

Thanks, I shall try udev rules and see.

cherkie · 2019-04-04 08:30:37

I will pitch in - I "had" the same problem as OP, but solved it easily - Super+P (which I set up as shortcut in rc.xml), Alt+O for outputs, go down, go right press enter, press alt+f4 and it's done. Takes me less than a second. The issue bothered me so much that I went away from BL only to return to it, because other distros are crap (and I have tried about 20) compared to BL.

linux_user · 2019-04-04 12:10:11

cherkie wrote:

I will pitch in - I "had" the same problem as OP, but solved it easily - Super+P (which I set up as shortcut in rc.xml), Alt+O for outputs, go down, go right press enter, press alt+f4 and it's done. Takes me less than a second. The issue bothered me so much that I went away from BL only to return to it, because other distros are crap (and I have tried about 20) compared to BL.

What did you set Super+P as? Can you as well elaborate the whole thing? A little lost!

damo · 2019-04-04 12:43:05

linux_user wrote:

..
What did you set Super+P as? Can you as well elaborate the whole thing? A little lost!

Super+P runs arandr gui; Alt shows the accelerators on the top bar; Alt+O runs the Outputs window etc etc. He is saying that with just a few keystrokes you can set the monitors

You can do it even quicker if you save a screenlayout script for each layout, and run them with a toggler script by a keybind.

ohnonot · 2019-04-04 18:23:14

damo wrote:

Super+P runs arandr gui;

oh! that's been set to "Open Music Player" for, like, ever on my setup - probably since my crunchbang days. i always thought it was part of the "cb/bl canon".

damo · 2019-04-04 18:47:54

ohnonot wrote:

damo wrote:
Super+P runs arandr gui;
oh! that's been set to "Open Music Player" for, like, ever on my setup - probably since my crunchbang days. i always thought it was part of the "cb/bl canon".

Maybe it is, but @cherkie set it to run arandr AFAICS

linux_user · 2019-04-06 11:10:13

damo wrote:

Super+P runs arandr gui; Alt shows the accelerators on the top bar; Alt+O runs the Outputs window etc etc. He is saying that with just a few keystrokes you can set the monitors
You can do it even quicker if you save a screenlayout script for each layout, and run them with a toggler script by a keybind.

Ah yes, good to hear about these solutions even if I am using just one monitor.

As mentioned earlier, the whole idea of this topic was to discuss on whether arandr should handle the situation when one or more of the active and connected displays disconnect. I still believe that it should by giving a feedback (for the arguments posted in earlier posts) and I understand most of you disagree with me.

Anyway thank you all. Let me think thrice about raising this issue in the arandr repo.

Last edited by linux_user (2019-04-06 11:11:25)

#1 2019-03-13 06:18:05

[CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#2 2019-03-13 10:07:54

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#3 2019-03-14 15:41:24

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#4 2019-03-14 19:26:45

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#5 2019-03-14 22:40:10

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#6 2019-03-15 06:12:45

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#7 2019-03-15 10:59:12

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#8 2019-03-15 19:08:02

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#9 2019-03-25 15:28:41

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#10 2019-04-03 12:52:55

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#11 2019-04-04 08:30:37

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#12 2019-04-04 12:10:11

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#13 2019-04-04 12:43:05

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#14 2019-04-04 18:23:14

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#15 2019-04-04 18:47:54

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

#16 2019-04-06 11:10:13

Re: [CLOSED] ARandR feature suggestion

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