I would like to see xfce support opening applications under the mouse, wherever the mouse happens to be. For example, I have ctrl-alt-b set as a keyboard shortcut to open a black xterm underneath my mouse, wherever it is on the screen. On a dual-head monitor setup, this is even more critical to have. Instead of mousing 15" across the screen to where the xterm opens up and then dragging it back to one of the corners, I can have it open in the corner, where my mouse was when I activated the shortcut. This goes for any app launched from any menu. Why do all applications HAVE to open in the dead-center middle of the screen, every time? I'm slowly trying to migrate away from Sawfish (which does this and quite a bit more), and noticed this wasn't supported by xfce. This isn't a critical or "grave" issue, but with more people going to composite, dual-head, Xinerama, etc. setups, it will soon become one..
(In reply to comment #0) > On a dual-head monitor setup, this is even more critical to have. Instead of > mousing 15" across the screen to where the xterm opens up and then dragging it > back to one of the corners, I can have it open in the corner, where my mouse > was when I activated the shortcut. This goes for any app launched from any > menu. Xfce places the window on the screen where the mouse resides in Xinerama. This means that it will not open a window on the other monitor, unless the application specify for a location itself, which is not the case of regular xterm. > Why do all applications HAVE to open in the dead-center middle of the screen, > every time? I'm slowly trying to migrate away from Sawfish (which does this and > quite a bit more), and noticed this wasn't supported by xfce. Xfce will detect when an application places a dialog in the middle of the screen and relocate the winodw in the middle of the monitor where the pointer resides. > This isn't a critical or "grave" issue, but with more people going to > composite, dual-head, Xinerama, etc. setups, it will soon become one.. I'm a bit surprised that you are experiencing these problems, because xfwm4 was one of the first window manager to support Xinerama (that was supported in xfce v.3) What version are you using?
To your question: I am running Xfce4 v4.4.1 here, just built it a few minutes ago from the bootstrap installer. The problem I'm having, is that I want the application to open _under my mouse_, not on the same monitor as my mouse. This means when my mouse is in the lower right-most corner of a 30" monitor, and I activate an 80x24 xterm window, I want that xterm to appear in the lower-right corner, not 15" away in the center of the 30" monitor... EVERY application opened in Xfce4 opens up centered on the active monitor, modal. To compare this to my production Sawfish config, I have shortcuts that open applications in specific regions of specific workspaces (for example, launching separate xterms with pine opening specific mail folders, tiled on workspace 16). With Xfce4, I can't replicate this capability. I can't open applications on other workspaces from a different active workspace, I can't open applications to appear under my mouse, etc.
(In reply to comment #2) [...·] > To compare this to my production Sawfish config, I have shortcuts that open > applications in specific regions of specific workspaces (for example, launching > separate xterms with pine opening specific mail folders, tiled on workspace > 16). Open the WM tweaks settings, switch to the "Placement" tab folder, and ajust the size of window to trigger smart placement. That will arange new windows to reduce overlapping. > With Xfce4, I can't replicate this capability. I can't open applications on > other workspaces from a different active workspace, I can't open applications > to appear under my mouse, etc. Sorryn but these are different topics. But that leads to a naive question, why not stiking to sawfish then, since it fits your need so well?
Back on topic, opening applications under the mouse is pretty easy and would help in some case, so your request makes sense.
Implemented with revision 25594 in trunk. A new option allows to specify how to position windows that aren't not placed "smartly", either at the center (as before) or under the mouse. You can grab a snapshot here: http://foo-projects.org/~olivier/preview/xfwm4-4.5.0-r25594.tar.bz2