[mythtv-users] Lost focus on multihead configuration

[Julian Cerruti]

Hello mythTV users,

I'd greatly appreciate if anyone can give me a hint on
this topic I am still unable to solve.

The short version of the question would be, how can I
configure two different window managers to run under
the same X server, one on each display of a dual-head
configuration? 

I'll also venture a longer explanation at the risk of
boring to death potential helping hands.

I am a very happy mythTV user, trying to give the last
configuration touches to my setup. 
I am running Fedora Core 2 on a Pentium 4 2.8Ghz.
I this single PC which is used both as a mythTV
backend/frontend and also as a personal workstation
for e-mail, music, word processing, etc.
The PC has two video cards. One is connected to a PC
Monitor, where I run my KDE session and the other
video card is connected through the tv-out to two TV
sets in different rooms. There is an remote control
receiver next to each TV so I can watch a recorded
show in the bedroom while my wife is reading e-mail in
the main console. That is the concept at least.

After I got my second (tv-out) video card, I worked
with my xorg.conf and drivers until I got it to work
as a second display. With that working, I could now
start applications to show on the TV using
DISPLAY=:0.1. That is how I start mythfrontend now.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf:
...
Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "Default Layout"
        Screen      1  "Screen1" 0 0
        Screen      0  "Screen0" LeftOf "Screen1"
        InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
...

I didn't enable Xinerama because I don't really want
to go from the main screen to the TV screen or back.
In reality, I want them to be separate independent
displays.
The problem I have using this setup is that when KDE
starts it opens a KWin, desktop and panel in the
second display as well as the first one:

# ps -ef | grep kdeinit
...
myuser   10586 10561  0 17:52 ?        00:00:00
kdeinit: kwin -session 117f00000... -display :0.1
vero     10587 10561  0 17:52 ?        00:00:00
kdeinit: kwin -session 117f00000... -display :0.0
...

This is no problem at first, but as soon as someone
sits on the PC console and starts using any
application, mythfrontend loses the focus and goes to
the background, with which:
a) The KDE panel pops on top of mythfrontend, covering
part of the bottom of the TV scree n
b) I can no longer work with mythfrontend popup menus.
Whenever one pups up, None of the options have the
focus and thus I cannot navigate them or choose any
option. I can only select "Exit" from my remote and go
to the previous screen. This is particularly
unconfortable because I cannot erase recordings after
watching them.

I've been circling around trying to get this right for
several weeks, looking at information such as KDE
admin manuals, backstreet-ruby how-tos and some other
stuff. I no longer know where to head now, so I'd
greatly appreciate any advice on how to get around
this.

So some of my questions would be, 
how can I tell KDE NOT to start on display :0.1 and
leave that display alone so I use only mythfrontend
without any window manager?
Will mythfrontend popups work without a window
manager?
Else, how can I specify a separate window manager on
each display? Maybe then I could start fwvm or some
simple display manager on the second display
(something that doesn't have a panel and that doesn't
have window focus linked with the first desktop)?
Should I change my strategy here and configure two
separate X servers instead of only one with the two
screens? Any pointer to how-tos or documentation on
doing so?
Even though I want just independent screens, is still
Xinerama my answer?

A little additional information, in case it is needed
to answer some of the avobe:
- I'm using mythfrontend with native lirc support
instead of irxevent.
- My login manager is kdm

Thanks in advance for any help and also for the help
already provided as part of the huge amounts of
information on the list archives.