Ideal screen rotation

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Sat, Nov 07, 2009 at 11:46:28PM +1100, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> > > 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. :)
> > 
> > I'm definitely not following you... I envision the following scenario
> > according to what you say, could you please elaborate on why it wouldn't
> > happen this way?
> > 
> >  1. App wants to be landscape, sets property on window
> >  2. "rotator" determines the phone is in portrait, rotates.
> > 
> > Now what happens?
> > 
> >  3. App is landscape, but screen is portrait: fail
> > 
> > or
> > 
> >  3. Window manager overrides rotation
> >  3.1 but "rotator" determines portrait, rotates again
> >  3.2 go to 3: fail
> 
> rotate and wm should work closely together or be the same. the wm reads ande
> knows all the properties of all windows. the rotator can do this independantly
> - but its a fair bit of work. the wm makes decisions which rotation to use
> based on app properties and rotation preference (preference maybe being set by
> the user explicitly or automatically by accelerometers - how, doesn't much
> matter).

It can do *your*way* with more work than the WM, but then, if the WM *doesn't* do
rotation according to accelerometers, this is a moot point :)

> rotator doesnt go off and do whatever it likes irrespective of app hints. it
> needs to take them into account - put hints on window as properties.

Of course, but there has to be a standard way to take their needs in account :)

Being X properties or DBUS, it's the same for me. DBUS seems more natural as
there's probably less pooling, but then I know only a bit more of DBUS than
of X11 (which AFAIR was a bunch of huge books) :)

Rui