Fixing where windows come up on RHEL 9

[Olivier Fourdan]

Hi

Unlike Wayland, X11 exposes global coordinates and the ICCCM allows X11
applications to specify a location for their windows. And most X11
applications (ab)use that feature.

xfwm4, the window manager in xfce, applies the following heuristic for
placing windows when first mapped:

1. If the X11 client specified a location, use that.
2. If not, either place the window where there is least overlap with other
window, or centered on screen, depending on the settings.

xfwm4 will (optionally) save and restore the location of windows along with
the session (to restore the windows after a log out/log in), but it will
not remember the location all all window from all applications after they
get closed during the lifetime of a session (or even after that
applications get closed), but many X11 clients do that themselves and try
to restore the location of their windows when restarted.

All that to say that the center window / smart placement only applies to
clients which do not specify a location for their windows.

Cheers
Olivier



On Mon, 22 Jan 2024 at 20:21, Thomas Cameron <thomas.cameron at camerontech.com>
wrote:

> I see that there are tools in the Settings Manager applet, including
> Window Manager/Advanced/Windows snapping, and Window Manager
> Tweaks/Placement/Minimum size of windows to trigger smart placement
> (small) and "at the center of the screen." But even with playing around
> with those settings, I can NOT get a new window to be centered. I am
> trying to get new windows to be centered, or at least I'd prefer that if
> I close an app, it opens in the same place next time, but it doesn't.
>
> I am probably doing something wrong, but my Google searches are
> apparently weak. If anyone has advice, I'm all ears.
>
> --
> Thomas
> _______________________________________________
> Xfce mailing list
> Xfce at xfce.org
> https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce
> http://www.xfce.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce/attachments/20240122/269972b8/attachment.htm>