External monitors/projector

[Z.C.B.]

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 08:33:21 +0930
Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 26 April 2006 at 10:40:25 +0200, Arnt Gulbrandsen
> wrote:
> > Par Leijonhufvud writes:
> >> I have a IBM Thinkpad R50e with 5.3 and x-org. Sometimes I want
> >> to use a projector as a secondary monitor (mostly with beamer
> >> style presentations). I haven't been able to find any good
> >> pointers on how to get it to use the external monitor/projector
> >> properly. Any suggestions?
> >>
> >> Ideal would be having the option of either have the screen and
> >> the external monitor/projector show the same things _or_ being
> >> treated as separate entities...
> >
> > The former is easy. Press some button on your laptop 2-3 times.
> 
> Specifically, the one marked "CRT/LCD" or some such.  On my laptops
> (Dell) it's Fn/F8.
> 
> > The latter is sort of impossible, unless you cheat by using one of
> > those 802.11 beamers.
> 
> This depends entirely on the display chip set.  Microsoft can now
> handle dual displays, so more modern laptops are capable of
> displaying different things on the LCD panel and the external
> connector.  It's not always clear whether X can handle it; for
> example, I've had a Dell Inspiron 6000 for 6 months now, and I
> still can't work out how to get it to drive the external display
> correctly.

Not tried it with my Toshiba yet, but I assume it works the same as on
my desktop. Just treat it like a multihead video card.

The hard part with X is getting it to only display stuff on the
external screen when something is connected.

> Note that there are many other issues with external monitors, and
> even more with projectors: many projectors are much more finicky
> about signal timing, and will just shut off if they don't like what
> they're given.  Again, the Microsoft world has normalized this sort
> of thing. If you're planning to use projectors a lot (for
> presentations, for example), it's a good idea to mimic Microsoft
> timings.

X should be able to fetch this using DDC.