Bug 11418

Changing Component to Server/general.

Note: this is also useful as a trivial magnifier for accessibility.

I think you are referring to ability to make the virtual desktop size bigger than the current mode size.  

Personally I don't like to permanently have a small viewport scrolling around a large virtual desktop, but I LOVE the ability to hit <ctl><alt><KP+/-> and temporarily zoom in on something.  

It is a very useful accessibility feature for people with marginal eye sight.  I would be very disappointed if the feature was lost from X.  

That's exactly what I meant.

(In reply to comment #0)
> randr-1.2 enabled drivers do not implement virtual screens where the
> crtc moves around inside a larger desktop. Implementing this would restore a
> traditional feature of X windows which will be sorely missed by those of us
> used to virtual desktops. According to Alex Deucher, it shouldn't be too hard
> to implement:  you'd basically just add an adjustframe() hook to the
> crtc functions and then add the proper server side code to support
> it.
> 

Removing the virtual screen function, would in my opinion be absolutely wrong. I use it on every linux system that I install. In fact, the first thing that I do after setting up a new system is to modify my xorg.conf file to give me a fairly large virtual screen. I totally hate to do without it. The virtual screen makes working with several different apps much, much easier.

Created attachment 18204 [details]
my virtual desktop

An example of what my virtual desktop looks like

My sentiments are *exactly* the same as DHA's in comment #5

I find it so restricting without setting my virtual desktop height to something almost 3 times the height of my monitor's physical screen height.

Doing away with this functionality is a disastrous idea in my opinion.

This is killer inovation & functionality that sets Linux desktop systems HEAD & SHOULDERS above Windows desktops.

PLEASE can we have it back again ASAP?

Competent web development depends on thorough testing of web page designs in numerous environmental combinations, among them, the different display resolutions used by users. Without needing the real hardware that would otherwise be required, I used to be able to do that, and capture it using KSnapshot, with virtual, e.g., relocating the missing # and restarting X or starting another X on another virtual terminal:
Section "Screen"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      24
    Modes      "1024x768" "800x600
#    virtual 1152 864
#    virtual 1280 720
#    virtual 1280 800
#    virtual 1280 960
#    virtual 1280 1024
#    virtual 1366 768
#    virtual 1400 1050
#    virtual 1440 900
#    virtual 1600 1200
    virtual 1680 1050
#    virtual 1680 1200
#    virtual 1792 1344
#    virtual 1856 1392
#    virtual 1920 1080
#    virtual 1920 1200
#    virtual 1920 1440
#    virtual 2048 1536
  EndSubSection

Since this is a previous functionality that no longer exists, it really constitutes bustage, and thus this bug should not be classed as an enhancement request.

Panning support will be back in randr 1.3 (code is already committed) which will be part of xserver 1.6.

Panning is implemented in randr 1.3 despite my strenuous objections.