[xmonad] Managing Multiple Displays

[Ramon Diaz-Uriarte]

Dear Eyal,

For the "This means that if my laptop is suspended and I want to disconnect
the external monitor and put it in my bag for later use, I need to first
wake it up, unlock it, launch the script to turn the laptop monitor on, and
then put it away. "

why not have a script that, on resuming from suspension, calls your already
working script? This should work even if your screen is locked.


I have a very ugly kludge in a script that does that.

I no longer use more than one monitor at a time (my neck did not like it),
but I work either with the laptop connected to an external monitor or just
with the laptop monitor, and I can easily switch from one to another with
suspend events (and all suspend events include locking) in between. When I
resume from suspension, the script is called so that it uses the external
monitor if the laptop is plugged to it (and the monitor is on), or the
laptop otherwise.

My script is called by a service file I placed as
/etc/systemd/system/configure_monitors.service (I can send you the service
file and my script kludge, but the later is just a bunch of calls to xrandr to
figure out what is connected, and then configure the screens).

Best,


R.






On Fri, 09-July-2021, at 16:14:54, Eyal Erez <oneself at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I often use multiple displays.  Here are some configurations that I've used
> with my laptop:
> 1. Laptop monitor only
> 2. External monitor only (laptop lid closed)
> 3. External and laptop monitor at the same time.
> 4. Two external monitors (laptop lid closed).
>
> In order to show display correctly (which monitor is to the right/left of
> which and which is on/off) and shift trayer around to the right monitor and
> position, I've written a script that parses the output of xrandr, figures
> out if the laptop lid is open or not, then calls xrandr again to activate
> the right monitors and kills and relaunches trayer and places it in the
> correct position.  I launch this script from a keybinding configured in
> xmonad.hs.
>
> This works, however, it has several disadvantages.  The first is that
> adding a new configuration is a bit tedious -- this doesn't happen very
> often so it's not a huge deal.  The other is that I can only activate the
> script if my screen is unlocked.  This means that if my laptop is suspended
> and I want to disconnect the external monitor and put it in my bag for
> later use, I need to first wake it up, unlock it, launch the script to turn
> the laptop monitor on, and then put it away.  Otherwise, I'll be staring at
> a blank screen when I turn it on and have to guess what to press to unlock
> and use the script.
>
> I was wondering how others deal with this challenge?  Are there other, more
> well-built tools, than the script I have to do this more robustly and
> automatically?
>
> Thank you,


-- 
Ramon Diaz-Uriarte
Department of Biochemistry, Lab B-25
Facultad de Medicina
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 
Arzobispo Morcillo, 4
28029 Madrid
Spain

Phone: +34-91-497-2412

Email: rdiaz02 at gmail.com
       ramon.diaz at iib.uam.es

https://ligarto.org/rdiaz