GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 595562
Allow to stick a workspace to a monitor
Last modified: 2011-03-17 13:54:09 UTC
It would be nice if instead of enlarging all current workspaces when plugging a monitor you were able to select which workspace you want to show on that monitor. For example, if I have a workspace with all Empathy windows (irc chatrooms, jabber, contacts ...) I want to see them all the time, or if I have Evolution displaying a mail that I'm using as a reference to do some coding (in a terminal shell in another workspace and in another workspace I have an Epiphany window with searches and another workspace with a devhelp window).
I must admit I'm not quite sure what this request is asking for. Possibly something like bug 564713?
I'm asking that when you plug an external monitor the display preferences capplet lets you choose either the new monitor extend all your workspaces or to stick it to a defined workspace. That way when you Ctrl+Alt+Arrow keys to switch to another workspace the external monitor still keeps displaying the same content. Say you have 4 workspaces: --------- | 1 | 2 | --------- | 3 | 4 | --------- Then you plug an external monitor and the workspaces (right know are enlarged): --------------- | 1 | 2 | --------------- | 3 | 4 | --------------- What I'm asking is to set a new option in the display preferences capplet that instead of enlarging all workspaces it lets you select which workspace will be displayed on the new attached monitor: --------- | 1 |*2 | --------- | 3 | 4 | --------- * is (in this example) the selected workspace that will be shown on the external monitor. That way if in that workspace you have a window that you want to keep seeing whenever you are in any workspace you can just drag that window to the specific workspace you have decided to be displayed on the display preferences. It could be also helpful when connecting projectors, so you have your workspaces to keep your notes on a presentation and a designed workspace to show the slides or demonstrations of your talk. Is more clear know?
If that's something that will be implemented, it would be in gnome-shell which handles workspace switching.
The behavior of GNOME Shell (as of this morning) is that workspaces only apply to the primary monitor and windows on other monitors stay fixed. So this becomes the same as the selection of the primary monitor in the display panel. Now, of course, this isn't as flexible as what you are asking for here, but there are a lot of questions that come up when you consider moving a workspace between monitors and I think all the resulting complexity and confusion would definitely be in the realm of a shell extension rather than core behavior. Closing FIXED on the assumption that was actually desired was the functionality not a preference to have it both ways.