20 May 2007

How to create Xinerama-friendly desktop backgrounds

I recently started using a new machine with two 20" flat panels used as one giant desktop with Xinerama. It's very nice and comfortable, but X isn't yet smart enough to manage the backgrounds of the two screens separately, and wants one image stretched across the whole desktop.

So here's how to turn two 1680x1050 images such as these into one 3360x1050 image with ImageMagick:

$ montage -size 3360x1050 -geometry +0+0 left-image.jpg right-image.jpg result.jpg

It's much easier than assembling the images manually in The Gimp.

4 comments:

Daniel said...

Nought to do with X: look at whatever's managing your background for Xinerama-awareness.

Marius said...

I *knew* ImageMagick could do this. Only I couldn't figure out the command line for it, so I wrote myself a Python script for this. :-)

hendry said...

What about a photograph of your actual desk with the screens?

Romain Francoise said...

Daniel: right, I guess I meant GNOME instead of X...

Hendry: it's nothing special really...