Re: Application window size.

[Oliver George <o_george postoffice utas edu au>]

Tom Gilbert wrote:
> 
> * Daniel M. German (dmg@csg.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
> >
> >
> >  Tom Gilbert twisted the bytes to say:
> >
> >  Tom> * George Farris (george@gmsys.com) wrote:
> >  >> You know one thing I find super annoying is having to resize an
> >  >> application **every** bloody time I open it.  Is there no way of
> >  >> doing this in Gnome or Gtk.  For example I open my home directory
> >  >> in GMC and am presented with a small window.  I resize the window
> >  >> the quite the application.  Next time I open it, @#$%^&* same small
> >  >> window.  Only way to fix this is in the source code.
> >  >>
> >  >> This is a problem for almost every Gnome application.  I'm looking
> >  >> at writing another small utility and I'd really like to have it
> >  >> save the size.  Is there a Gnome standard on this or is it up to us
> >  >> coders to implement or not implement as we see fit?
> >  >>
> >  >> --
> >  >> George Farris - VE7FRG
> >  >> George@gmsys.com
> >
> >  Tom> I think application size is up to the windowmanager. Your wm should
> >  Tom> have tools to help you save the status of applications. Enlightenment
> >  Tom> certainly does.
> >
> > The application size should be left to the application. This relates
> > back to my rantings about parsing the geometry command line
> > option. Few applications do it. The ones that do not should be
> > considered incomplete, IMHO.
> >
> >  Tom> Apps may set themselves a minimum or a recommended size, but they
> >  Tom> should not interfere with the job of the wm by specifying the size
> >  Tom> themselves. Applications (such as netscape) who save and load their
> >  Tom> own geometry aren't doing users any favours. IMO.
> >
> > If the applications allowed --geometry then the user has full control
> > of how large and where the window should appear.
> >
> > check the behaviour of gnome-terminal as compared to gnumeric
> 
> Whats wrong with
> o Open app
> o Set desired size/location
> o Click Remember/Size+location
> 
> App always opens as I specified. This is how it should work. If an app
> set its own size/location, what happens when you open multiple copies
> of it? What if you don't want to always specify --geometry?
> 
> Also, what's wrong with
> o Open app
> o Set desired size/location
> o End session
> o Restart session - app is restored to the size it was when you left
> it.
> 
> If the application has code which sets its own size/location, then the
> session manager is _powerless_ to restore its settings.
> 
> I stand by my previous point.
> 
> I suggest you
> a) Use the power of session management
> b) Use a decent wm.
> 
> Tom.

I know I'm slightly off the point with this but...

The thing we want to do is have the same application (say gmc) opening
two windows in two different positions with different sizes based on
some sort of application context.  The solution for this is to have the
session manager store some context information from the application when
it closes.  Then when the application is opened, the session manager
maps the new context to the correct session state.

This would only effect the applications defaults but it beats only
allowing one position per app.

I am fairly ignorant of the code and the assumption I am making is that
the session manager is hooked to the opening and closing of an
application not just the forced termination at the end of an xwindows
session.


Oliver.