193390 - [RFE] multiple X server support

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 125482

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[Chris Abbey]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030124
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030124

Emacs has a rather nice capability that I've come to depend on entirely too much
and would therefore like to see in mozilla: the ability to open a new frame
(window) on a different display.

There are two environments I run in every day that can benefit from this. The
first is non-Xinerama multi-headed systems, like a great number of my coworkers,
I run dual headed off my primary workstation and do NOT run Xinerama. The effect
of this is that I have one display (:0) with two screens (:0.0 and :0.1) which
are seperately addressable. If I open emacs on :0.1 and want to display on both
screens I can then use it's "Open Frame on Display..." menu item and answer :0.0
on the "which display?" query to pop open a new frame on the other display. If I
latter close the frame on the original screen, the instance of emacs is still
running, because it still has an active frame on the new screen.

The second environment where this is usefull is with VNC servers. It is not
uncommon for us to connect to our desktop workstations from at home and then
fire up a vnc server on then, this vnc server has a new X server embeded within
it, and is bound to a different display, such as :10. If we need to access the
mozilla profile on our desktops workstation (in order to access bookmarks, or
stored passwords, or stored certificates that we don't have at home) in this
case we're stuck if mozilla is still running with a display on the xlocked
screen in the office. A current hack that a number of us have used is to killall
mozilla-bin in a terminal, but this often looses a number of things, most
commonly new bookmarks that were added durring that session. With this requested
new support available from the command line then we could use X-remote to open a
new window on :10 from a command line, and not loose the mozilla session.

I suspect this may require some support from the base XP widget set, for example
to track the display that is connected at the window level instead of globally,
so that child windows can behave "normally".

There needs to be a few interfaces to this function (basically any way you can
today open a new window needs a parallel; however, since this is a less common
action, it doesn't need to clutter quick access interfaces such as the context
menu.)
1. File -> New -> Navigator Window (on different X Server)
2. command line / X-remote
3. scriptable

Admitedly, this is a hack to work around the inability to run multiple instances
with the same profile; however, it has the side benefit of reduced overhead, as
you only have one copy of Mozilla (and possibly bulky plugins such as java)
loaded into mainstore at a time. One also must be cognizant when running with
windows scattered around on multiple windows not to Exit, but rather to close
windows. This however, is usually one of the first things people learn when
working in a multiple display environment, so it should not be a limiting factor
for implementing this feature in mozilla. (That said, a confirmation dialog on
exit that warned of open windows on other displays/screens would be nice.)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 125482 ***

Comment 2

[timeless]

vrfy dupe