Shell: Treat large monitors as multiple displays

[danielyzli]

I noticed in the docs that it is planned to treat ultrawide monitors as two displays side-by-side by default, which makes sense. Is it possible to make this behaviour configurable (i.e. default # of display rows / columns). For instance, this would make sense for those large 43" 4K displays which are essentially 4 21.5" monitors, as well as the super wide 32:9 displays that could be split in 3 columns. Thanks and really appreciate your work!

[dustymabe]

I do this today with i3 with a little known feature called fake-outputs. You can find some references to it in the i3 FAQ (link). For example I carve out my 3840x2160 display into 4 different rectangles with:

#              fake-0           fake-1           fake-2           fake-3        
fake-outputs 1440x1080+0+0 1440x1080+0+1080 2400x1080+1440+0 2400x1080+1440+1080

in my i3 config. I would love to have this concept/feature in pop-os/shell. It may be possible already, I'm just now getting to a point where I can try this project out but I've been wanting "i3wm for gnome-shell" for a long time and I really hope the fake-outputs functionality is something that is being considered.

[WatchMkr]

We're tracking a potential configurable columns feature here: https://github.com/pop-os/shell/issues/204

[dustymabe]

Hey @WatchMkr - Is the word "Columns" taken literally? The fake-outputs feature of i3 really allowed you to define any area to be used as a separate logical monitor. For example, I have two 27" widescreen monitors that I rotated vertically (portrait mode) and then I split them in half (so two "rows", not two "columns". I also have another setup with a single 43" TV as the monitor and I've got it split up into 4 unequal partitions (all treated as a separate monitor essentially). With i3 fake-outputs you can slice it up any way you'd like given x,y coordinates.

[WatchMkr]

Right considering vertical layouts, column isn’t the best description for customizing the split.