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

Jason Parker-Burlingham jasonp at uq.net.au
Mon Mar 31 00:20:04 EST 2003


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Robert Brockway <robert at timetraveller.org> writes:

> 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

Yeah, I know all that, and I will add xrdb "hints" if necessary to
solve this problem.

> 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].

What I'm curious about is where the application may be storing the
location of its last window, across invocations of the program.

Obviously either the server, application or window manager is storing
this information on the filesystem (since the behavior persists over
reboots) but I can't find any indication in, say, a strace to narrow
it down so I was hoping someone would just know.

> [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,

Incidentally I could just *kill* the ever-so-clever GTK folks who
decided they didn't want to support pesky things like --geometry.  As
if X application didn't have enough consistency problems already.
-- 
``I didn't program you for sarcasm.''

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