Expand one window over two virtual desktops on KDE

kdevirtual-desktopwindow-management

My laptop's resolution is low, and some programs cannot display their content normally in a small window. Is possible to expand one window over two or multiple virtual desktops?

Best Answer

It's an unwieldy feature to switch on and off (you have to restart X to do it), but you may be interested in setting up a so-called "virtual viewport". This creates a virtual display area larger than your physical display which automatically (and slightly annoyingly >.>) pans itself around when you move the mouse toward the edges/corners of the screen. It can be distracting, but it'd certainly let you open windows of any size you like - and you might even get used to the constant panning (!) :P

Once you've setup an xorg.conf file as per your distribution's instructions (newer Linux distributions do not ship with one, leaving X to figure itself out, which it can typically do now), locate the Display SubSection and add a Virtual line in with the resolution you want, eg

    SubSection "Display"
    ...
        Virtual 1280 1024
    ...
    EndSubSection

to the requisite part of your xorg.conf. Restart X, and your screen should be "virtually" bigger :P
To turn it off... you comment out the "Virtual ..." line so it reads "#Virtual ...", then restart X. Like I said, unwieldy to switch on/off.

Examine the xorg.conf manpage (yes, there's one with that name) for further low-level reading or google "x11 virtual viewport" for somewhat less terse information :P
Probably the two most salient/relevant bits of info from that manpage are the ViewPort parameter, which specifies the starting pan-point of the screen (the default is to center the virtual screen into your physical display), and that the first parameter to Virtual must be a multiple of 8 or 16 - if you specify a non-multiple you'll most likely discover X has rounded it up or down for you - so it fits the graphics card's requirements.

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