Multiple Screens (Compact 2013)
3/26/2014
Windows Embedded Compact provides support for connecting multiple screens to a Windows Embedded Compact-based device. You can use these multiple screens as one large combined screen. All of the screens must form one contiguous region. This region can cover up to four screens, which must be placed adjacent to one another and arranged in a straight line from left to right.
In a multiple-screen environment, only one graphics device can be VGA compatible because of a limitation of computer hardware that requires that only one device respond to any hardware address. Because the VGA hardware compatibility standard requires specific hardware addresses, only one VGA graphics device can be present in a machine and only this device can physically respond to VGA addresses. Therefore, applications that operate in full screen mode only run on the particular device that supports VGA hardware compatibility.
Windows Embedded Compact has the following restrictions on the number, placement, and characteristics of multiple screens:
- You can connect up to four screens to a device. You must place these screens adjacent to one another and arrange the screens in a horizontal line from left to right.
- The primary screen is leftmost and contains the point (0,0) at the upper left corner. As a result, Windows Embedded Compact does not use negative coordinates for locations on the virtual screen.
- Whether the primary screen is the same as the VGA or boot display depends on the implementation of the display driver.
- All screens must have the same bit depth.
- You cannot change the number of screens while the system is running. You can only change the positions of the screens by physically switching graphics cards.
To add this feature to your OS, see Multiple Screens Catalog Items and Sysgen Variables.
For reference information, see Multiple Screens Reference.
Portions of example code for this feature are available in the EnumDisplayMonitors reference topic.