configure multiple x screens (tv/vga) -- borked!!

Message

Jerri · Post by **Jerri** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 2:40 am

I have been tinkering with my xorg setup, which consists of running in nvidia's cloned twinview, or with a dual screen display. I quite fancy the latter for a host of reasons which I wont bore you with. Anyways, the only thing that bothers me with the dual display (which is currently "tv" leftof "vga"), is having the mouse cross over from my monitor to the TV inorder to change focus. What will usually happen is I loose track of my mouse when browsing.. its somewhere over on my TV.. which becomes rather irritating after a while.

What I would like to do, is disable all pointer input for my TV screen completey, while maintaining a seperate screen from my desktop. That way, I can specify a program to run on my tv using this: [DISPLAY=:0.1 command]

The reason being, is I only use my TV to watch videos and DVD's, and for this I always use mplayer. This of course begs the question, why bother with pointer and keyboard input for a TV screen when it only encourages irritation and is never used?

Is there any way to disable the input devices for the second screen?

Karl-Franz · Post by **Karl-Franz** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 11:25 am

Not answering the asked question, but, to decrease annoyance level, you could put the tv RightOf vga.

That is if you don't have a mousewheel...

Jerri · Post by **Jerri** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 1:45 am

RightOf only adds to the frustration, as the right side of the screen is almost always reserved for scroll bars.

Jerri · Post by **Jerri** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 1:48 am

One thing I have been trying is to use to seperate screen layouts, however It doesnt want to work... if anyone can see what I might be doing wrong, then by all means let me know.

drakonite · Post by **drakonite** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:45 am

I think I understand what you are trying to do but lemme repeat it just to make sure we are on the same page...
You are wanting to have two screens, one on your CRT, the other on your TV, and you only want your mouse cursor to go on the CRT?

I've been doing something along the same lines for a while now.. I have my CRT acting as a normal desktop would act, and then my TV has mythtv running on it at all times, with no way of moving mouse focus to/from the TV (remote used to control mythtv); let me warn you: none of the software seems to have been designed to function this way!

In order to prevent the mouse from venturing to the other screen, you have to omit the scren position information (i.e. RightOf Screen 1, or whatever it's supposed to be)
My server layout looks like this:

Code: Select all

Section "ServerLayout"

    Identifier  "Simple Layout"
    Screen 0 "Screen 1"
    Screen 1 "TV Screen"

    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

EndSection

In order to prevent issues in the event your computer is started without the TV on, you need to add the following to both screen sections:

Code: Select all

Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT, TV"
Screen 0

Using Screen 0 for CRT, and screen 1 for TV.

This is by far not a perfect solution, however it does work. I've only tried this with fluxbox, so no guarentee how it'd work with other WMs. There are a few issues with controlling programs, but you'll figure those out fast enough.

The only issue to be concerned about, is that if some rogue program *cough*wine*cough* decides to be idiotic and toss your mouse cursor onto the TV, there is no easy way to get it (and thus all input focus) back other than restarting X.

I'm busy trying to get lirc working again, so I've probably left bits out... lemme know how it works out.

Jerri · Post by **Jerri** » Wed Dec 14, 2005 4:06 am

perfect! works like a charm.
Thanks

drakonite · Post by **drakonite** » Wed Dec 14, 2005 4:38 pm

Congrats! As far as I've been able to tell this now makes you the second person to ever get this to work (me being the first...)