[H-GEN] How do X Windows know where to pop up?

[Robert Brockway]

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On Sun, 30 Mar 2003, Jason Parker-Burlingham wrote:

> This has been driving me *crazy* for, oh, years, but it only recently
> (as in a couple of months) became truly annoying.  Whenever I start,
> say, xzgv(1) or ImageMagick's display(1) program, the window is mapped
> in such a way that I almost always have to resize it (xzgv) or move it
> back to the middle of the screen (display).  This drives me crazy!

The X server decides in the end.  The window manager can pass information
about placement.  Most X apps should support the --geometry switch.  Its
entirely possible that some may not however (does this come through
Xlib?).

Eg:  xload --geometry 100x60+25+25

Those reading along may be interested to know that it's possible to do
placements from other sides of the display also:

xload --geomtery 100x60-25-25 would go up and across 25 pixels from the
bottom right corner of the display.

This is great if you have multiple displays on the one box with different
physical resolutions.

> In both cases I think it's a matter of these programs having been in

The app may be able to over-ride requests about geometry and ask X for
placement in a specific spot.  Sometimes recent apps have shown
assumptions that seem to me to be based on an MS-Windows programming
style[1].

I would have thought resources would have done this also (but you
mentioned you couldn't find anything Jason).

[1] I had a situation with galeon recently where it made an assumption
that I would not be logged into the same box from 2 different displays,
and thus brought up new windows on the wrong display.  Making such an
assumption is bad.  I'm going to see if this problem manifests on mozilla
too (from which galeon is derived) and report it as a bug/supply a patch.

Cheers,
	Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah

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