Dual screen, mouse pointer hidden?

rggjan · 2009-12-06 06:59:43

When I use my eeepc together with an external screen, I can configure them nicely using the gnome display preferences. However, when I want to use both screens together, It can happen that the mouse gets lost out of both screens!

The problem seems to be the different sizes of the screens (800x480 and 1440x900), the screens look like this:

------------------
| |
X | |
| |
------- |
| | |
| | |
------------------------
Now this works well, if I'm within the two screens. Also, I can not move windows outside of the screens. But when I'm on the left (small) screen with the menu on top, and I want to click one of the menus and go to the top with my mouse, the mouse just disappears and does not stop at the bottom of the screen. That means, I can move my mouse in the area where the 'X' is, because when I go right, the mouse appears on this height on the larger screen.

Do you understand the problem? This is very annoying.

Does anyone know if one can turn this off? Or should I file a bug report? On Xorg? Gnome? Xrandr?

Cheers
Jan,

Last edited by rggjan (2009-12-06 07:01:00)

goodgrue · 2010-02-14 05:35:38

I am having the same problem with a slightly different setup. My monitors are configured as follows:
_______
______X_____| |
| | |
| | |
|____________| |
X |_______|
My cursor can move into both of the "X" areas.

I use xrandr to set the position of the left screen as 0x400. I am running XMonad as my window manager and using nouveau graphics drivers.

I also thought about filing a bug report, but I'm not sure which part of the graphics stack is responsible for constraining the cursor to the visible screen. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Last edited by goodgrue (2010-02-14 05:38:14)

rggjan · 2010-02-14 13:58:20

I tried it here:

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/17658

But this seems to be the expected behaviour...

jdarnold · 2010-02-14 15:59:08

Yes, unfortunately X doesn't deal with different sized displays all that well, which is why I've always tried to get matching displays. Right now, I have a 1600x1050 and a 1280x1024 displays and so there is very little "hidden" area. Another things you can do is to change the size of the virtual screen on the smaller screen to match the height of the bigger one. This means the smaller one "pans" when you scroll into the extra region. Using nvidia-settings, you can change the "Panning" field to match it, so I could change it from 1280x1024 to 1280x1050 to get a slight "shift" in the display when I move the mouse into that region. Not ideal, but the best you can do.

goodgrue · 2010-02-14 18:09:12

Very interesting...thanks for the info, both of you. I'm still interested in finding out which component (video driver, xrandr, etc..) handles the "mouse is at the edge of the virtual desktop...don't let it go any further" logic. It might not be too hard to whip up a patch for my personal use, but I'm just not sure where to start.

Another option might be patching the window manager to handle this. I did some searching and it seems like some WMs (e.g. WindowLab) constrain the mouse pointer during certain actions. It might not be the most elegant, but there may be a way to use the same idea to do what we want. I'll report back here if I make any progress.

rggjan · 2010-02-16 09:03:15

OK, sounds great! Maybe you could then post your results in an upstream bug report? Maybe for xorg or something? Would be great to have this changed in a future implementation, of whatever component is best to "patch"...

jck · 2010-12-29 20:55:18

I filed a bug report on freedesktop.org : https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32731

Arch Linux

#1 2009-12-06 06:59:43

Dual screen, mouse pointer hidden?

#2 2010-02-14 05:35:38

Re: Dual screen, mouse pointer hidden?

#3 2010-02-14 13:58:20

Re: Dual screen, mouse pointer hidden?

#4 2010-02-14 15:59:08

Re: Dual screen, mouse pointer hidden?

#5 2010-02-14 18:09:12

Re: Dual screen, mouse pointer hidden?

#6 2010-02-16 09:03:15

Re: Dual screen, mouse pointer hidden?

#7 2010-12-29 20:55:18

Re: Dual screen, mouse pointer hidden?

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