Test of a beamer pdf (using notes) Laptop with dual screen support: problems

[ouboub]

Hi

I just compiled a latex beamer file with notes. I am using a Thinkpad X201 with an Intel 4 graphic card which according to the documentation and the comments on the thinkpad linux mailing list should support dual screens.

I opened the pdf file with dspdfviewer, and can toggle between three screens,

1. the screen with the presentation

2. the screen with the notes and

3. the double screen showing both.

so I connected by Laptop to an external screen. But whatever I did the external screen just duplicated my
Laptop screen. I hoped to see on my laptop the doble screen:
presentation with notes and on the external screen only the presentation, but this was not the case.

what is the problem here? my graphic card? Linux (running Ubuntu 14.04). it seems that I cannot attach the pdf file.

any comment is highly appreciated

thanks

Uwe Brauer

[Rondom]

You need to to configure the output to be in "extended desktop mode" (or whatever it is called), i.e. not clone-mode. This is something you configure outside dspdfviewer using xrandr (command line) or whatever GUI-tools your desktop environment provides for configuring screens.

[dannyedel]

Picking up on what @Rondom wrote, this is a layer below dspdfviewer, but I will try to help you diagnose it.

To see if your graphics card driver works correctly, please post the output of xrandr while both monitors are physically connected to your computer.

You "should" see two separate outputs being detected, which usually have different combinations of resolutions. Here's an example from my PC:

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3200 x 1200, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1 connected primary 1920x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 518mm x 324mm
   1920x1200     59.95*+
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00  
   800x600       75.00    72.19    60.32    56.25  
   640x480       75.00    72.81    59.94  
HDMI-0 connected 1280x1024+1920+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 376mm x 301mm
   1280x1024     60.02*+
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00  
   800x600       75.00    72.19    60.32    56.25  
   640x480       75.00    72.81    59.95    59.94  

My driver correctly detects my two monitors, one on the DVI-I-1 port and one on the HDMI-0 port. Yours should be similar, with one monitor on the internal port (often labeled LVDS).

In my case, I use the following command to...

• Set both monitors to their specific preferred resolution
• Activate extended-desktop mode, with the smaller HDMI screen being right of the big DVI one
• Set the big DVI screen as primary

xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --preferred --primary --output HDMI-0 --preferred --right-of DVI-I-1

If xrandr does not detect both monitors individually, you have a problem with your graphics card driver. In that case, you might want to ask in the Ubuntu forums, since driver issues are OS specific.

[ouboub]

Hi Danny,

thanks very much, your help solved my problem.
xrandr returned
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 261mm x 163mm
1280x800 60.0*+ 50.1
1024x768 60.0
800x600 60.3 56.2
640x480 59.9
VGA1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1280x1024 60.0 + 75.0
1152x864 75.0
1024x768 75.1 75.0 70.1 60.0
832x624 74.6
800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
640x480 75.0 72.8 66.7 60.0
720x400 70.1
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

so I modified your command to
xrandr --output LVDS1 --preferred --primary --output VGA1 --preferred --right-of LVDS1

which resulted in the configuration I was looking for, thanks very much. May I suggest to add some lines
to, the main webpage (or maybe I am the only ignorant here). As for the other problem concerning the compilation installation, I will answer the relevant thread.
thanks again
Uwe