Comment # 21 on bug 1054645 from Michal Srb

(In reply to Stefan Dirsch from comment #12)
> I haven't tried Michal's xrandr yet, but I'm wondering why you expect a
> realignment of the monitors, when changing the resolution via scale option
> of the "inner" monitor when omitting the position option like e.g.
> --letf-of? 
> 
> Have you tried that? IMHO it would be even wrong to do an auto-alignment
> here, i.e. silently changing the position.

I agree with Stefan here. Xrandr is not going to change position unless you
tell him with the absolute --pos parameter or one of the relative parameters
like --left-of. The information whether a monitor was placed relatively to
another or on absolute position is not stored anywhere. From X server's point
of view there are only absolute positions and xrandr does not persist any
settings itself. It is a simple tool that does only what is it told at the
moment. Other randr tools, like kscreen, may store such information aside.

I will check how it behaves with more monitors, but keep in mind that you
should always specify the full setup including all relative positions when
calling xrandr. Otherwise it will do only the changes you write, leaving the
rest as it is.