how to fit the panel to screen width??????

1zzzzzz · September 28, 2011, 11:23am

Hi,

I want to ask how the panel at the bottom of the screen can be adaptive to the entire screen width?

My laptop screen is 1440900 and the external screen is 19201200, so when I switch from the small screen to the bigger one, the width of the panel is not changed. I have to change manually, which is very boring. Is there automatic way?

Thanks very much.

DenverD · September 28, 2011, 12:48pm

On 09/28/2011 11:26 AM, 1zzzzzz wrote:
> when I switch from the small screen to the bigger one, the width of the
> panel is not changed. I have to change manually, which is very boring.

i have exactly the same problem (well, my nettop and external screens
are different sizes from yours) and i have come to just ignore the
difference…

but, am interested in the ‘boring’ way you manually cause the panel to
extend side to side on the external screen?? (i never thought to try,
because some folks love their panel to NOT go side to side…i think the
Apple Mac is born with a little panel only in the center–and, that is
supposed to be really super cool, no?)

by the way, if i did know how to do it automatically it would be for
KDE–but i don’t know if that would help you because you didn’t declare
either a DE nor a OS/version…

–
DD
Caveat-Hardware-Software-
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

deano_ferrari · September 28, 2011, 1:11pm

A bug report has been filed for this:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673612

You may want to add to it.

1zzzzzz · September 29, 2011, 12:01am

DenverD:

On 09/28/2011 11:26 AM, 1zzzzzz wrote:
> when I switch from the small screen to the bigger one, the width of the
> panel is not changed. I have to change manually, which is very boring.

i have exactly the same problem (well, my nettop and external screens
are different sizes from yours) and i have come to just ignore the
difference…

but, am interested in the ‘boring’ way you manually cause the panel to
extend side to side on the external screen?? (i never thought to try,
because some folks love their panel to NOT go side to side…i think the
Apple Mac is born with a little panel only in the center–and, that is
supposed to be really super cool, no?)

by the way, if i did know how to do it automatically it would be for
KDE–but i don’t know if that would help you because you didn’t declare
either a DE nor a OS/version…

–
DD
Caveat-Hardware-Software-
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

Hi, firstly, I set the panel in the center of the screen, so that it looks not bad, anyway. Then, if I change to another screen, I open the panel setting and click “maximize the panel” or something like that (I am under windows now), then the panel fits to the screen width.

I am using kde4.6 of opensuse 11.4. Actually, I install the opensuse 11.4 recently. After the system was installed, there was no problem of the panel. I mean the panel can be adaptive with the screen width automatically. Then, I upgraded the system to the up-to-date one and the problem appeared. I thus think it is because of kde. I am not sure.

john_hudson · September 29, 2011, 9:40am

Whenever you use two monitors, KDE always adapts the screen display to the smaller size monitor. I don’t think it is practical to change this because KWin would have to recalculate everything for the second monitor which would probably slow down the display on both.

1zzzzzz · September 29, 2011, 11:19am

For my understanding, this is very fundamental function the system should provide with no excuse. If I switch to a bigger screen and the panel only takes up 60% or 70% of the screen width of the new display, what is this? OR, Microsoft windows is slow because of recalculating its task bar.

I am sure it is practical, because I use ubuntu for two years before I come back to opensuse recently. Ubuntu can handle this very well. So I am sure it could be improved, if it is not a bug.

1zzzzzz · September 29, 2011, 11:24am

Another thing I find suddenly is that If you click ‘panel setting’, you will see the setting panel can be adaptive to the screen width without any problem.

john_hudson · September 29, 2011, 7:54pm

You may be right but AFAIK Gnome’s window manager has not been re-written recently whereas KWin was re-written to take account of the shift to Plasma and the current functionality is more ‘automatic’ than it used to be; you may get a more informed answer from KWin • KDE Community Forums

deano_ferrari · September 29, 2011, 8:59pm

I am using kde4.6 of opensuse 11.4. Actually, I install the opensuse 11.4 recently. After the system was installed, there was no problem of the panel. I mean the panel can be adaptive with the screen width automatically. Then, I upgraded the system to the up-to-date one and the problem appeared. I thus think it is because of kde. I am not sure.

I haven’t experienced this problem, (mostly because my external monitor is 1366x768, while my laptop is 1680x1050), but I wonder if you could get things working the way you like with

KDE System Settings>>Display and Monitor

Configure the way you like with the second monitor plugged in, and save the defaults once you’re happy with it. I had to set my laptop display as primary, so that I could keep the main panel remaining on the laptop dispay (where I wanted it). Anyway, the result of my configuration was this line in ~/.kde4/share/config/krandrrc

StartupCommands=xrandr --output "VGA1" --pos 1680x0 --mode 1366x768 --refresh 59.7895
xrandr --output "LVDS1" --pos 0x0 --mode 1680x1050 --refresh 60.0012
xrandr --output "LVDS1" --primary

Of course, when the second monitor is not present, this config will be ignored. I’m not sure how this will work for you, and I’m not in a position to test with a high-res monitor.

I agree with you, that this behaviour should be easy for the KDE developers to rectify. Have a look at existing bug reports - its bound to be on the agenda. If not, file one.