XRandR support on the VR

Overview

The changes consist of several parts:

• An X-server rebuilt with Xrandr support and a couple of minor fixes (one to make sure the silkscreen buttons can still generate events after the rotation, and one to work around a bug in the timestamping of the Xrandr in XFree86 4.2)
• vrdm hacked not to pass the contents of /etc/orientation to the X server on startup (see below)
• xvr3or modified to send Xrandr requests to the server rather than kill it. It also has a command-line mode.
• vrsm contains the largest number of changes:
  • On startup it reads /etc/orientation and invokes xvr3or to get the screen to the correct rotation
  • It then registers itself to receive Xrandr events
  • On receiving an event it shifts the logical silkscreen buttons round to match the position of the physical buttons in the new coordinates
  • It then kills and restarts vrwm in a simple-minded attempt to sort out window sizes and positions (this isn't perfect but it works for a lot of applications.

If you're wondering why we no longer pass the orientation to the X server on the command line, it's because the orientation it picks up from the -screen option is unrelated to the Xrandr rotation. That is, Xrandr rotation 0 is always the orientation the X server started up in, even if the server was started up in an orientation other than the default. Whereas from the point of view of the Xrandr clients it's much easier if the same rotation value always means the same thing. So in the interest of sanity the X server is always started upright and then rotated to the position saved in /etc/orientation by invoking xvr3or.

Downloads

The binaries are built with the snow compiler that vrdeb 2.1 installs (snow 1.4).

• The X server binary and source patch(assumes you have already applied the main VR3 patch)
• The vrdm binary and source
• The vrsm binary and source
• The xvr3or binary and source

Screenshots

Restarting the WM is enough to resize maximised applications correctly
Landscape mode is most useful for long lines of text
keymacs gets a bit confused when the screen gets taller, but things sort themselves out next time it resizes

Credits

See the source files for the names of the authors: I did not write any of these applications.