Bug 333216

Summary:	Ability to mirror displays isn't obvious.
Product:	[Plasma] KScreen	Reporter:	rubin110 <rubin>
Component:	kcm	Assignee:	Daniel Vrátil <dvratil>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	minor	CC:	afiestas, allcoms, hbock, kernelcruncher, Markus.Elfring, orion, pier_andreit, rubin, stephan.herrmann
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian unstable
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description rubin110 2014-04-08 23:09:17 UTC

Steps to reproduce:
1. Start KDE
2. Plug in a second display to mirror your current display to
3. Open System Settings
4. Select Display and Monitor
5. Objerve

Expected result:
Some sort of UI to mirror the current display to the second display.

Actual reult:
No helpful UI to mirror the displays.

Notes:
It took an email to debian-kde@lists.debian.org to be informed that the way to mirror a display is by overlaying the second display on the first one and it just magically works. When you actually do that there's no UI letting you know mirroring is what's happening. This doesn't seem all that intutive to me. At the very least there should be some line of text at the bottom of the window stating to overlay the displays in order to activate mirroring, or simply a check box to turn it on.

Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2014-04-09 22:26:01 UTC

It seems intuitive once you know it. But if you do not know it, it isn't obvious. Had the same problem during a presentation :/

Comment 2 Dan MacDonald 2014-04-11 21:25:23 UTC

This tripped me up too. Subconsciously I think I thought I might crash X/KDE if I dragged one on to the other.

Most Win display control panels normally have a separate option to enable mirrored displays so I expect this is what most people, like me, are looking for.

I agree with the OP's solutions to helping reveal this almost hidden feature.

Comment 3 thekernel 2014-05-16 03:57:12 UTC

Agreed
I too had the same experience when lecturing at college.

Comment 4 pier andre 2014-05-16 08:47:50 UTC

...yes, me too had problems and doubts on how to fully superpose the two screens..., I think a "clone" and "unclone" button could be useful...

Comment 5 Orion Poplawski 2014-05-20 00:52:26 UTC

It is also a much harder process to synchronize resolutions when the displays support very different sets.

Comment 6 Stephan Herrmann 2014-06-21 14:10:10 UTC

(In reply to comment #5)
> It is also a much harder process to synchronize resolutions when the
> displays support very different sets.

Is there actually any support to synchronize resolutions (other than manually selecting one that may be offered by both monitors)?

IMHO this is more than just adding a tooltip, from all I can see in Kubuntu 14.04, kscreen 1.0.2.1-0ubuntu1 there is NO option to actually clone/mirror two monitors of different native resolutions. To me this feels like a regression over kde-desktop-randr.

Could you please consider adding a specific control that aligns two monitors in position & resolution?

Currently, for s.o. doing presentations in different configurations, this bug is a show stopper (in the literal sense :) )

Comment 7 Stephan Herrmann 2014-06-21 14:12:12 UTC

(In reply to comment #6)
> To me this feels like a regression over kde-desktop-randr.

s/desktop/workspace/

Comment 8 Markus Elfring 2014-07-14 11:43:34 UTC

I find also that the visual representation and support of cloned screens should be improved.
How do you think about to provide a tree view for such a purpose in the user interface?

Comment 9 Daniel Vrátil 2015-03-05 17:16:29 UTC

In Plasma 5 we now have "Unitfy outputs" button in the KScreen KCM which will do all the cloning magic for you, including picking the best common resolution for all screens.