Ok, maybe this has been discussed before, however I could not find it in a preliminary search.

I have four monitors set up like this, wall mounted:

A B
C D

My question is, how can I have one wall paper that spans (A,B) and a separate wallpaper that spans (C,D)?

Hi Jon,

Is there any hope of getting this functionality in Display Fusion?

I have the following monitor setup:
A
B C D

I would like to span a wallpaper across displays B,C, & D but use a separate wallpaper on display A.

I'm guessing this type of thing is going to be too difficult to be implemented easily. You always have to take the number of monitors times itself to account for all possible variations people will want. In this and the above case, it would be 16 possible variations (4 x 4). Almost a whole 'nuther program...

I'm a little confused by this response. I think the approach that allows the most flexibility is to allow the user to select (via Ctrl+clicking) the monitors on which to span a wallpaper and then give them the option of handling the other montiors individually.

So, for my example, I'd want to multi-select monitors B, C, and D and pick 1 wallpaper that spans those displays. I'd then want to separately apply another wallpaper to display A.

I guess the question comes down to what technique is used to draw the wallpapers on the desktop. Is the desktop handled as one big window when drawing the desktop? I'm unfamiliar with the trick used to place the wallpaper.

I'm a little confused by this response. I think the approach that allows the most flexibility is to allow the user to select (via Ctrl+clicking) the monitors on which to span a wallpaper and then give them the option of handling the other montiors individually.

So, for my example, I'd want to multi-select monitors B, C, and D and pick 1 wallpaper that spans those displays. I'd then want to separately apply another wallpaper to display A.

I guess the question comes down to what technique is used to draw the wallpapers on the desktop. Is the desktop handled as one big window when drawing the desktop? I'm unfamiliar with the trick used to place the wallpaper.

Sorry if this was confusing. What I meant was, you, personally, won't need all those variation possibilities, but for that kind of thing to be programmed in, it would have to support all others who want many different arrangements of 4 monitors as well. (thus the 4x4 possibilities)

Actually, after reading what Coleman wrote, I can see the simplicity of it (perhaps not the code, but the idea behind it).

Using check boxes / drag and drop, the user could check which boxes would be used to display as 1 'monitor' - a virtual monitor, if you will, and then set the appropriate wallpaper for that group, and then the same for the remaining group(s).

If the programming were changed from assigning the wall paper to physical monitors to assigning to a virtualmonitor, then the virtual monitors (each) could be comprised of 1-X # of monitors, X being a reasonable (4,5?) number of monitors horizontally linked. Then DF could assign the Wps to each virtual monitor, and it would overlay the set monitors as they have been grouped.

Again, I realize that this is (programmatically speaking) a lot harder than it sounds on paper, but I just wanted to say that I can understand the concept now, and if some sort of container could be created in DF to assign the Wps to, as opposed to interacting directly with the monitors, well, I think that the benefit there would be a massive uptake in the use of DF - folks like day traders with multiple monitor setups would be (finally) able to make good use of DF just as well as those of us with two or 3 monitors....

Exactly!!!

This is what I was getting at about handling the wallpaper drawing as if you were drawing to a series of windows.

In my case, even though are 4 separate physicaly monitors, there's still on 1 desktop that spans all 4 monitors. Monitors B, C, D span the coordinates -1600,0 to 5120,0. Monitor C is my primary display (which makes it by definition at 0,0). Montior A is at 0,-1152.

I (programmatically speaking) the technique to draw the wallpaper works like working a "hidden" window, then the creation of virtual monitors is really an overt technique for partitioning that windows and drawing different images in those partitions. I know, I'm totally oversimplifying -- and, that's not my intent, but I hope this gets across what I'm looking for and possibly a way to technically accomplish it within a program like DF.

Thanks again.

Allow the user to Ctrl+Click in the Desktop Wallpaper window to select multiple displays and then give the option to add those selected displays to a virtual display.

I've drawn a simple mockup where the displays highlighted in red have been multiply selected. Then, when a virtual monitor is selected, enable a new option in the "Background Mode" group or image mode dropdown that says "Use 1 image for this group of monitors". The user could then select the left over monitors separately in order to apply a different background to those.

A rule that would have to exist, I imagine, is that monitors that are grouped to create a virtual display must be contiguous and connected either vertically or horizontally.

the ctrl click works, another way that could be done that also forces the contiguous check would be to simply allow users to make a drag box in the monitor selection window. After they do either of these, have some shift in the background mode part of the GUI, just a simple flash and change the option to "span an image across these monitors", and you could even, for whatever reason, change the other option to "Use the same wallpaper on all monitors in this set". This would also allow for the CTRL clicking to not HAVE to be contiguous, rather just have the first option to span grayed out when a user does such. Even throw an override because you never know what some people want to do with this program

I understand you are looking for a software solution to combining different displays/wallpapers, but there is an easy way.
I use gimp (in Linux) and set your canvas size first to the size you would need to cover all monitors, then insert the two wallpapers into your canvas where you need them to be and save it normally.

You can create collages of your family pictures, etc this way too.

Now specify that file, and tell it to span all monitors.

Try it and see if it works for you.

It is an extra step in getting wallpaper, but once you create a few this way, you can do it quickly. Most people with multiple monitors are used to (resigned?) to doing a little extra to get it the way you want (grin).

Steve

Ok, you just told everyone to not use the product you're on the forum for.

DF is made to keep things easy, taking out the step of having to manually create each wallpaper. My computer cycles through 300 wallpapers a day, I REALLY don't want to bother making 300 different images just to get it to work correctly. That's why there is DF. what is being discussed in this thread is a very nice, streamlined solution to the issue of wanting different options to span wallpapers.

Please either delete your post, or if Jon would do so that would be nice. Delete this post as well if you do.

Also BTW, depending on the distro, linux has innate support for almost everything DF encompasses. ESPECIALLY the shifting wallpapers and different images.

Doing this for each and every wallpaper I have is extremely impracticle for me. I have hundreds of wallpaper files and splitting them all by hand would take a lot of work on my part. Why do this?

Sorry, that should have been "combining them by hand".

I've only completed 1 wallpaper like this to my liking and it was with some trial and error, so if DF can present a software solution for this in the wallpaper settings then I'm set -- not a to mention that i'll be a very happy customer.

I'm supporting the ctrl-click idea.

I'm running 2 monitors most of the time, but every time I have company over I use my TV as my third monitor - which messes up my current wallpaper. Would be nice if I could create a profile that would make it possible to bind the spanned wallpaper to my 2 main monitors, and when I connect the third monitor, it would give it a separate wallpaper, and not try to span my dualview-wallpaper across 3 screens.

Of course I could simply divide my dual-wallpaper into two separate ones but that would make the whole "rotating wallpaper" useless, as I would have to do this with every wallpaper...

DF = simplicity, as stated above.

another ctrl+click option can be usefull to change image position on the whole image and not only one monitor(partial image).
selecting multiple monitors allows to change image position more simply and quickly as actually.

The more I think about this, the more I really like the Ctrl+Click solution for creating virtual displays.

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this functionality. DF is a lifesaver for me, especially in Windows 7, and I think this one bit of functionality would put it "over the top" for me!

Yeah, this is a very neat idea. I only have two monitors, but I tell you... I just may have to get a 2 more to play with it if this feature was added haha.

Ctrl + Click ftw!

Hey Kevin,

I love Display Fusion on the Windows XP side of my two-monitor dual-boot system, but I haven't figured out how to get the the Linux (Ubuntu 9.10) side to work the same way. DisplayFusion lets me put a different wallpaper on each of my two monitors. Ubuntu's built-in dual-monitor support seems to want to span both monitors with a single image. I realize I could use an image editor to manually tile the two images into one and then use that as my Ubuntu wallpaper, but isn't that what DisplayFusion automatically does so nicely under the covers? Is there any way with Ubuntu to easily put one picture as the wallpaper on one monitor and put a different one as the wallpaper on the other?

P.S. I did a little more research and everything I found says that that no, Ubuntu 9.10 does not natively support different wallpapers on different monitors. I'd love it if you could prove me wrong! However, I did find a script which offers this and a few other features of Display Fusion here: http://www.webarnes.ca/2010/02/dual-screen-wallpaper-script/

- Rich

As I said depending on the distro. And things like that script are the exact fix and reason linux is so amazing. I believe the last distro that I saw that had that was Dedora core, but that was back when FC5 was out, 6 years ago or something.

Thank you for taking the time to investigate this!!! I'm very much looking forward to this feature.