Shell rotates inappropriately in windowed mode

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

Install latest rc proposed on a nexus 4.
Attach a bluetooth mouse - this triggers windowed mode.
Orient device in landscape
Open weather app - which is locked portrait in the .desktop file

Shell rotates to become portrait and there's no way to get it out of that mode easily.

The shell should probably ignore the .desktop setting which says that an app is portrait only if it's windowed.

----------------- Desired UX ----------------------------
The shell should not rotate automatically when it's in windowed mode.
It should just ignore .desktop file orientations since in windowed mode it's possible to show a portrait window in landscape mode and vice versa.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

It looks to me like the decision whether to honour the orientation restriction in the .desktop file is keyed on if an external screen is in use, not if the shell is running in windowed mode... clearly for some deviices operating in windowed mode on the built in screen would be desirable.

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

Also, the lock screen has a fixed orientation, so using the device in windowed mode in a different orientation to the lock screen will mean that if the screen locks the orientation will change and cannot be changed back without returning to staged mode.

r162

[Daniel d'Andrada (dandrader)]

I'm starting to think it doesn't make sense to enter windowed mode on such a small display, even though you have a bluetooth mouse & keyboard paired.

It does make sense of course to show a mouse pointer and not display a virtual keyboard in response to the availability of those input devices , but going to windowed mode, I don't think so.

[Michael Zanetti (mzanetti)]

Probably doesn't make too much sense on a 4 inch screen indeed, but going to windowed mode is a valid use case for tablets and even bigger things like convertible tablet/laptop things.

[Vesa Rautiainen (vesar)]

I've been testing the Unity8 on Nexus 7 this week and I could easily imagine using that in windowed mode with a mouse and a keyboard. So I think it's a valid use case to have possibility to use windowed mode on smaller devices. Where the limit goes is another question.

How about if we would simply ignore the .desktop file restriction in windowed mode? Is there a use case when we would want to alter between portrait and landscape based on the focused app in windowed mode?

[Daniel d'Andrada (dandrader)]

> Where the limit goes is another question

And that's precisely the question I wanted UX to answer.

[Vesa Rautiainen (vesar)]

Two separate issues have been discussed here:

1) Shell/App rotation rules for the windowed mode.

2) When to enable the windowed mode. Rules based on device size etc.

As I don't see these two depending each other there should be two separate bug reports for these. This bug report is about the first one.

[Michał Karnicki (karni)]

I don't have the device, quote from IRC:

(on Avila)

> it's sortof focus
> launch another app
> and it flips shell to landscape
> click on TG, and you're in portrait-shell
> click on the lanscape app, and it stays portrait
> auto-rotating in windowed mode is a bit broken, imho

I can't give an example of a 'landscape app', but whoever has a larger screen can probably find one. Essentially:
a) starting a new landscape app will flip to landscape mode (if shell was i portrait)
but
b) switching to (focusing) an already open landscape app will not (shell stays in portrait)

Generalizing a bit, I also believe orientation requested in the .desktop file should be ignored (at least to some degree?) in windowed mode.

[John McAleely (john.mcaleely)]

I understand that post ota-9 landings are now open. Is this in a silo?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unity8 - 8.11+16.04.20160129-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity8 (8.11+16.04.20160129-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  [ Albert Astals Cid ]
  * Audio Preview Button: Don't gain focus on press (LP: #1517830)
  * Better attempt at sanitization
  * Better looking application scopes for wide screens
  * Call printSettings correctly
  * Card test: Limit the precision we ask for doubles to be equal
  * Convert while into tryCompareFunction
  * Do not use the same filepath parameter for all the card creator
    createQmlObject calls (LP: #1536379)
  * Fix some test shells being unstable in the armhf builders
  * Make revealByEdgePush more stable
  * More reliable compares
  * Move the mouse over the bfb before waiting for rendering
  * Remove the DDAs constrains for every test
  * Set the background source size to the max we'll need + new
    background (LP: #1539011)

  [ Andrea Cimitan ]
  * Dynamically change click scope card size according to size (LP:
    #1536745)
  * Should fix lazyimage test failures on fast machines

  [ CI Train Bot ]
  * Fix card tests on the phone
  * Update translation template

  [ Daniel d'Andrada ]
  * Desktop stage rotates only to follow screen orientation (LP:
    #1515977)

  [ Lukáš Tinkl ]
  * Hide/reveal the mouse pointer on touch/mouse events renamed:
    plugins/Utils/HomeKeyWatcher.cpp =>
    plugins/Utils/WindowInputMonitor.cpp plugins/Utils/HomeKeyWatcher.h
    => plugins/Utils/WindowInputMonitor.h
    tests/mocks/Utils/HomeKeyWatcher.qml =>
    tests/mocks/Utils/WindowInputMonitor.qml
    tests/plugins/Utils/HomeKeyWatcherTest.cpp =>
    tests/plugins/Utils/WindowInputMonitorTest.cpp

  [ Michael Terry ]
  * Synchronize the mouse-cursor-speed and touchpad-cursor-speed
    properties with USC. (LP: #1536383)

  [ Michael Zanetti ]
  * Add InputMethod to secondary screen
  * Add a virtual Touchpad while external screen is connected
  * Make big tablets switch to windowed mode by plugging a kbd only (LP:
    #1535399)
  * Prevent alt key presses from being dispatched to the app on alt+tab
    (LP: #1532862)

  [ Michał Sawicz ]
  * Make qmluitests.sh more robust and allow parallel test execution
  * Skip SessionBackendTest::testLogin1Capabilities until we talk to a
    mock instead (LP: #1532112, #1532113)

 -- Michał Sawicz <email address hidden> Fri, 29 Jan 2016 11:53:27 +0000