At the moment, XFWM (4.0.4) places new windows in the top-left corner, and then cascades them down from there. However, a technique which I always found a lot more condusive to getting work done, was Metacity's technique of bringing up new windows in the center of the screen. Could XFWM be altered to bring up new windows in the center of the screen, and then following windows up in positions near the corners of that main window, and so on, like a flower/petal pattern? No more cascading, or repositioning windows to the center =)
xfwm4 computes smartly where to place windows on screen by searching a place to reduce overlap. It's doesn't cascade windows. Some apps (noticeably mozilla, gimp 1.x) insist on placing their windows at (0,0) and xfwm4 place windows where asked in that case. No bug here.
I think I misunderstood your point this morning. I'll see what I can do, but what you suggest will waste screen space (as compared to what it is right now) Olivier.
Currently i'm using XFFM version 4.1.1090+cvs.20041003-1 gently provided by Cintilation for Debian SID, and I think that XFFM is miscalculating the window position. When starting (for example) GAIM, I get the GAIM login window on the bottom left of my screen. I've never put it there so this position isn't saved nor requested by GAIM. Sometimes GAIM starts on the top left of the screen which is nicer. Even so, it'd would be really nice if it were possible to enforce a center screen policy on new windows, or if XFFM somehow cached the last known position of the window which I believe it must be really difficult to implement.
It's "xfwm", not "xffm". As for the placement, if a window doesn't ask for a specific location, xfwm4 will place it so it reduces the overlap with other windows, that's why you're seeing this. If you want it at a specific location, change Gaim so that it places the window itself and xfwm won't get in its way then.
Is it possible to use devilspie/wmctrl/something else to control this? Most apps (to my knowledge) do not supply an option to control where the window shows up, but (I imagine) most users have "usual" places for their apps... at least I do. :P
I would like to have the application "remember" the current window position and size when it is closed. The next time that the application is launched, the application is exactly the same way as before. Unfortunately, this is probably the responsibility of each and every application.
Olivier, can this be closed?
Seems a somehow similar technique has just been comitted to SVN trunk, maybe you could try that version?
The placement ratio is a good idea but I think the default value should somehow depend on the absolute size of the screen. Because the larger your screen gets the bigger the chance that "normal" windows (like xterms) will be placed to the center of the screen, most users probably know nothing about the hidden settings. With older xfwm4, when I opened four xterms they were placed (roughly) at the four corners of the screen but with the new system and it's default placement ratio all the xterms get placed to the center of the screen on top of eachother. I honestly thought that it was a bug until I found this bug report and the (hidden) placement ratio. PS. my screen is 1400x1050 and setting the placement ratio to 10 gave me back the old behaviour when opening xterms.
Is there or could there be a way to switch left and right (and maybe top and bottom) screen sides when the smart window placement is used? ...so if the screen is empty the first window would be place at the upper right corner, the next to the left of the first window and so forth. It would be useful if for example the panel is on the left side of the screen and it is auto-hiding, so if windows are placed further away from the panel the chance of accidentially opening the panel while trying to click on a window would be reduced.
(In reply to comment #10) > Is there or could there be a way to switch left and right (and maybe top and > bottom) screen sides when the smart window placement is used? I would appreciate this feature, too. On a notebook with xfwm4 running, some creatures may want the windows to be placed in the lower right corner first and from then on anti-clockwise.
(In reply to comment #11) > (In reply to comment #10) > > Is there or could there be a way to switch left and right (and maybe top and > > bottom) screen sides when the smart window placement is used? > > I would appreciate this feature, too. On a notebook with xfwm4 running, some > creatures may want the windows to be placed in the lower right corner first and > from then on anti-clockwise. > I'm assuming that this probably would be relatively easy to implement, but only interesting for a couple of users and then it will just add useless configureation options... I'm closing this as a 'wontfix'. If it's really a big wish, please reopen it...