Second Monitor Configuration Confusion

[Fedora User]

What on earth is the difference between "absolute" and "clone of?"

Furthermore, and I am reasonably sure that this is a dumb question but I
have a brain freeze; Suppose I configure the second monitor above, how
would I get, say, mplayer to play a movie in that space? How do I get
the mouse up there?

Thanks

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Wednesday, 22. August 2012. 15.50.45 Fedora User wrote:
> What on earth is the difference between "absolute" and "clone of?"
>
> Furthermore, and I am reasonably sure that this is a dumb question but I
> have a brain freeze; Suppose I configure the second monitor above, how
> would I get, say, mplayer to play a movie in that space? How do I get
> the mouse up there?

Not exactly sure what you are talking about when you say "absolute" and "clone 
of" (what application are you looking at? which DE?), but generally --- if you 
make a second display to be the clone of the first display, then it will be 
exactly that --- a clone, displaying the exactly same picture that is on the 
first monitor. Mouse and mplayer included.

However, if you want to enlarge your desktop to two monitors (with independent 
workspaces), you want to arrange them (both logically and physically) side by 
side, or whatever. Then, if you move the mouse to the right edge of the left 
display, it will "continue" to go to the right display, and so on. Similarly, 
you can drag&drop the mplayer window into the second monitor. Also, there is 
certainly some CLI way to tell mplayer where to open the window, etc.

What exact problem do you have with this?

HTH, :-)
Marko

[Fedora User]

On Thu, 2012-08-23 at 01:08 +0200, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> Not exactly sure what you are talking about when you say "absolute" and "clone 
> of" (what application are you looking at? which DE?), but generally --- if you 
> make a second display to be the clone of the first display, then it will be 
> exactly that --- a clone, displaying the exactly same picture that is on the 
> first monitor. Mouse and mplayer included.

"Absolute" and "clone of" are in the KDE dialog whenever I plug in the
second monitor.
> However, if you want to enlarge your desktop to two monitors (with independent 
> workspaces), you want . ..
> What exact problem do you have with this?

Probably my personality disorder. ;=) Thanks and I will experiment.

[Andrew Parker]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Fedora User  wrote:
> What on earth is the difference between "absolute" and "clone of?"
>
> Furthermore, and I am reasonably sure that this is a dumb question but I
> have a brain freeze; Suppose I configure the second monitor above, how
> would I get, say, mplayer to play a movie in that space? How do I get
> the mouse up there?

XRandR works on a logical display which is typically 8192 pixels by
8192 pixels.  Each monitor placed anywhere within that range.
Specifying "absolute [x/y]" mode for a port/monitor allows you to
place your bottom left pixel of your monitor to any pixel within it's
logical range.

Specifying "clone of [port]" indicates that the bottom left pixel of
that monitor is in the same place as the bottom left pixel of the
monitor attached to [port].  This is useful for projectors, for
example.

If you want one monitor above the other, you can do it by specifying
"absolute 0/0" for monitor-1 and "Above [monitor-1-port]" for
monitor-2.  You could specify an absolute position for monitor-2, but
then you'd have to start plugging appropriate values for the position.

Once you have done this, you can just drag windows between the
monitors as you might expect/hope.