GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 611513
Wallpaper spanning multiple monitors is broken
Last modified: 2013-04-26 11:20:25 UTC
This is with control-center-2.29.91-1.fc13.x86_64 on Fedora 13. See attached screenshot. FYI, the screenshot displays a 3200x1200 wallpaper (aspect ratio 2.6666...) on a setup with 2 x 1680x1050 monitors (3360x1050 -> aspect ratio 3.2). There are (at least) three problems here 1. Either 'Spanning' needs to be checkbox or we need separate - Spanning+Tile - Spanning+Zoom - Spanning+Center - Spanning+Stretch options. Because right now things only work satisfactory if the aspect ratio of the wallpaper matches the aspect ratio of total screen size. 2. If Spanning is selected, the preview thumbnail really ought to reflect the geometry of the monitors we span across. E.g. instead of displaying +---------+ (aspect ratio: 1.6:1) | | | | +---------+ it should display +-------------------+ (aspect ratio: 3.2:1) | | | | +-------------------+ because right now it is confusing: 3. The preview thumbnail puts borders on the top/bottom while the actual wallpaper has borders on the left/right. This is a consequence of 2. above.
Created attachment 154964 [details] Screenshot For some reason the attachment didn't make it through when filing the bug. I guess, because it was too big - and when uploading it later, I was told that the limit is 1000kB. Error reporting fail. Anyway. This means you only get the scaled version.
> <hadess> davidz, https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61151 <- that's > fixed in gnome3, right? No, sorry, this is not fixed - in GNOME 3, I don't even get the option to span the wallpaper across multiple monitors... Actually, the Background panel is only showing one monitor and whatever is chosen there gets shown on each monitor (I'd expect it to show me the same monitors as it is showing me in the Displays panel...) This is with control-center-3.0.0.1-3.fc15.x86_64
Noticed in passing that the design at https://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/Background actually discusses a "Span Displays" mapping. Maybe it's just not implemented?
I can confirm that setting the backgrounds on multiple monitors doesn't do anything except mirror the same background on both monitors. Please provide the ability to either stretch the existing image across the monitors, or allow different backgrounds on different monitors. Gnome 2.x used to handle this better.
Created attachment 201639 [details] available options Here is a screenshot that shows the available options - for some reason, I only get the zoom/span/whatever options only for things under 'Pictures', not for things under 'Wallpapers'
digging a bit, the wallpapers are all specified in /usr/share/gnome-background-properties/gnome-backgrounds.xml Removing the <options> element for a wallpaper makes the placement options appear in the background panel.
(In reply to comment #5) > Created an attachment (id=201639) [details] > available options > > Here is a screenshot that shows the available options - for some reason, I only > get the zoom/span/whatever options only for things under 'Pictures', not for > things under 'Wallpapers' That's entirely as designed. We went over this a year ago. Wallpapers with information about placement don't have a placement option in the configuration. But the display of them shouldn't be broken, and we should use the designed stretch options, not ones that we used in GNOME 2 (see bug 637386).
This is an old bug, but this is still VERY pertinent to the gnome 3 desktop. "1. Either 'Spanning' needs to be checkbox or we need separate - Spanning+Tile - Spanning+Zoom - Spanning+Center - Spanning+Stretch options. Because right now things only work satisfactory if the aspect ratio of the wallpaper matches the aspect ratio of total screen size." This still very much needs to be implemented, as I am having to size my backgrounds exactly to 3840x1080 so as to have them not drive me crazy when spanned across dual screens. I am running the Gnome 3.3.91 desktop, on Ubuntu 12.04 beta 1, with the gnome-team ppa.
The handling of spanning wallpapers has always been slightly broken. Bug 691883 comment 3 explains the necessary changes to the display panel and background panels to achieve a good background display on adjacent monitors, as used in dual-monitor desktop setups. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 691883 ***