Re: [Qemu-devel] Controlling SDL2 output with Ctrl+Alt+*

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

> Agreed. I think it's also worthwhile that the no-options out-of-the-box
> setup gives access to all of serial/monitor/graphics (preferably in a
> reasonably discoverable way, ie with tabs or menus).

tabs+menus are tricky with SDL, but gtk is the default ui for a
reason ...

> >> On (b): Swapping window content becomes pretty messy with multihead
> >> support.  And as SDL2 has support for multiple windows anyway I think it
> >> would be easier to just create a new window per vc.  Ctrl-Alt-123
> >> hotkeys could simply show/hide the windows.
> >>
> >> Comments?
> >
> > As long as you make sure the windows stay in the same place and
> > switching wouldn't make "the window" jump around,
> 
> Window placement is the job of the window manager, so the
> application can't guarantee anything like this.

Just hiding+showing a window (instead of destroying + re-creating it)
should help here as the window manager should figure it is the same
thing reappearing and should place it at the same location where it used
to be before it was hidden.

> If you want it to
> look like "one window whose contents change" then you should
> implement it that way.

I think it is very useful to be able to see both vga and serial at the
same time.  That is in fact one of the reasons why I use '-serial
stdio'.

> Conversely, if we think multiple windows is
> a better UI we should implement that for all the UI backends that
> we can support it on. I'm not convinced we should implement
> SDL2's UI differently from all the rest just because it seems easier.

I think it makes sense for gtk too, at least as an option.  Maybe the
gtk ui should allow for multiple windows and freely moving around the
tabs between them (like you can do with your firefox tabs).  Dunno how
hard this is to implement though.

On vnc it is pretty much impossible.

On spice it is a bit tricky.  But spice doesn't handle text consoles
anyway, so it is different already.

On sdl1: I'd leave it alone and just switch the default to be sdl2 once
all isses are sorted.

Dunno on cocoa.

cheers,
  Gerd