desktop 'tape'

[Matthew Weier OPhinney]

-- Benjamin Rich <benxor at cracksmokingducks.com> wrote
(on Saturday, 27 March 2004, 10:48 PM +1100):
> I was thinking of making this a feature request but it seemed too large
> to put in xfce-bugs, so here it is.
> 
> Situation: I use lots of desktops. Usually, in my multiple desktop
> pager, I have 7 desktops, 5 or 6 of which I end up using. I do this
> mainly because a) I use a lot of different applications and b) every
> major application needs a full screen to itself. GIMP, gFTP, Quanta,
> Evolution, etc. all require pretty much an entire screen to themselves
> for you to use them properly - hence, a desktop for each major app
> running.
> 
> Problem: In XFCE4, there seems to be no way of getting a window to load
> in the desktop it was spawned in. If I click the icon for firefox, and
> it takes 12seconds to load and display (being that it's firefox =P ),
> then I have to make sure I'm in a blank desktop when that moment arrives
> - or at least that I am where I want the app to load. Likewise, when I
> save a session with a copy of Evolution running in desktop1, when I load
> up XFCE4 again, Evolution will load only in desktop1 if I'm there at the
> time.

You might want to look into wmctrl or devilspie. I use wmctrl and create
wrapper scripts that look something like:
    #!/bin/bash
    mailer &
    sleep 5
    wmctrl -r mailer -t 3
and then it will launch my mailer and place it on workspace 4
(workspaces are numbered 0-3...). Devilspie might be more your style,
however -- you create a config and devilspie runs in the background and
applies settings to windows as they're spawned.

This solution is nice -- now I don't need to worry about which window
manager I'm using (unless it's not netwm compliant!), and I get the same
behaviour.

-- 
Matthew Weier O'Phinney
http://weierophinney.net/matthew/