Create intentional border with xrandr

Posted by benizi on Super User See other posts from Super User or by benizi
Published on 2012-10-01T16:57:43Z Indexed on 2012/10/02 9:40 UTC
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xrandr

Is there a way to tell xrandr "this space intentionally left blank"?

I have a laptop that drives its internal display at 1920x1080, but the external monitor I'm using, due to its different aspect ratio, doesn't have that mode. It runs at 1920x1200.

So, the basic setup:

xrandr \
--output LVDS-1 --mode 1920x1080 \
--output DP-1 --mode 1920x1200 --same-as LVDS-1

[not to scale:]
+-----------------------------------+
¦                 ¦                 ¦
¦  (laptop)       ¦  (external)     ¦
¦  (LVDS-1)       ¦  (DP-1)         ¦
¦                 ¦                 ¦
¦                 ¦                 ¦
+-----------------¦                 ¦
   (blank...)     ¦                 ¦
                  +-----------------+

How can I specify that the 1920x120-sized region below LVDS-1 should be displayed as a black bar that can't be accessed by mouse on DP-1?

I tried just coping with --panning 1920x1200+0+0/1920x1080+0+0/0/0/0/120, but I found the screen movement to be very annoying.

Update:

I found a workaround. (Update 2: changed it to an answer, per suggestion -- workaround doesn't answer the underlying question of leaving space blank.)

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