Show on ALL Monitors

[Nathan_K]

Is there a way for DTI to show on all monitors? I’d like the option to display it on all my monitors, not just the primary or active monitor. That way if I have something in full screen on my primary, I can still see the info on my secondary monitor.

Thanks Glenn. Awesome work as always.

[DougH]

I have it only on my second (smaller) monitor. =0 would be primary monitor. You might try 0,1 look at page 14 in the pdf doc.

[options]
# size and position

monitor-num=1

[Nathan_K]

Thanks for the idea DougH, but the 0,1 option doesn’t work. I’d already read the manual, on page 14 even, and didn’t see an option for more than one monitor, just which monitor, or virtual desktop, so I asked.

Glenn, if this is something that could be added if it doesn’t exist, that would be great. Maybe the option for 0,1,3,5 as an example of monitors 0,1,3 and 5? And maybe a -1 option for “all”? Not sure how much of a P.I.T.A. that might be, but it would be useful to more than just me I’m sure.

[DougH]

I just tried it with and without he comma. No luck.

monitor-num=0 1
monitor-num=0,1

[Glenn]

This is not a trivial task. You run into the whole issue of duplicating the display on monitors of differing specs. I’m still struggling to understand what Windows and/or Delphi is doing to my controls when the dpi is different from the design dpi.

You can always run multiple instances. that’s getting easier now. For example, set up a batch file that calls desktopinfo with different options section /o (page 10).

[Nathan_K]

I was really hoping it would be a simple addition. I know I can run multiple instances, but that of course doubles the queries to the different items, like WMI, etc., where an option to display on multiple monitors would not.

[zybexXL]

(nevermind)

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by zybexXL.

[Tadd H]

Is this still the process that is needed for having it on multiple screens?

[Glenn]

The following thought process is evolving…

I can imagine a scenario where Desktop Info becomes it’s own shared collector. See External Collectors about page 40. The first instance writes it’s data to a shared memory area, the second instance reads it with a series of COLLECTOR items and displays it.

This would be a really low cpu approach by avoiding duplicating the system queries and would be a simple addition (I think, I don’t have the code handy at the moment). It’s kind of equivalent to using the remote server option but without needing to run the remote server, it’s internal to a single Windows instance.

[zybexXL]

You would need a way of figuring out who is the current Master collector, and an election mechanism to promote one of the instances when the current Master is closed.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by zybexXL.

[Glenn]

So I’ve implemented this pretty much as described above. Secondary instances of DTI can display a subset of data by accessing the shared data. In my tests the main instance runs about 2% cpu when everything is idle while the secondary instance stays at less than 1%.

Keep an eye out for v3.6 in the next little while.

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