Ideal screen rotation

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Fri, 6 Nov 2009 20:24:13 +0000 Neil Jerram <neiljerram at googlemail.com> said:

> 2009/11/6 Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org>:
> > On Fri, Nov 06, 2009 at 04:40:04PM +0100, Helge Hafting wrote:
> >>
> >> Well, you cannot expect every app to have such preferences, this device
> >> runs generic linux apps that aren't made specially for the freerunner.
> >> Now, of course the app loader can do this, similiar to how we already
> >> request the cpu/backlight when launching some apps.
> >>
> >> But there is a problem. The user may switch between several apps with
> >> different rotation needs. (xmahjongg needs landscape, tetris needs
> >> portrait, ...)  How will omnewrotate be notified about this?
> >
> > The proper way is to define a set of DBUS signals.
> 
> Thanks to everyone for your replies on this topic.
> 
> I agree with Helge, in that I don't think DBUS is a good solution,
> because I really want a solution that works for existing apps.
> 
> I suppose for existing apps there could be a DBUS proxy that somehow
> works out the best orientation and then sends a DBUS signal on the
> app's behalf.  But that seems complicated.
> 
> Also I'm not sure why DBUS helps at all.  Once a program somewhere has
> worked out the best orientation, why not just call xrandr directly?
> 
> Another thought that occurred to me is that if this was a window
> manager responsibility, perhaps the window manager could infer
> preferred orientation simply from the requested window size?  (i.e.
> requesting width > height implies a preference for landscape).
> 
> That should often work for apps that were designed for the desktop.  I
> would guess that apps written for the FR might not request specific
> sizes, because they'd know that they will always be fullscreen anyway
> - so for those apps some explicit configuration would be needed
> somewhere (prefer-portrait, prefer-landscape, or auto-rotate).

repeating... "property on window". the rotation preferences are a property of a
window - like min and max size are, its title, etc. etc. - stick it on the
window. ignore dbus. this is not something you do by dbus.

if something is related to the display - especially something is related to
your window, your domain for advertising state, information, making requests
and getting replies is the x11 domain as long as you are using x11. :)

-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster at rasterman.com