How to adjust the window resize border width

hlslaughter · 10-16-2011, 12:54 PM

I have a heck of a time resizing windows using the mouse/cursor because the size of the grab area is so tiny.

I typically have to use ALT+RIGHTMOUSEBUTTON+POINTER and that works fine, but it would be much easier if I could just grab the window border with the cursor and resize.

I'm hunting in gconf and can't seem to find anything except in the compiz settings, and I don't use compiz.

teckk · 10-16-2011, 02:05 PM

What Window mgr. or Desktop environment are you using?
Are you using Fedora core 5? That's real old.

hlslaughter · 10-16-2011, 09:43 PM

Ah, I still have FC5 set in my profile... That's wrong...

I'm using Ubuntu, but I'm not sure what window manager I'm using

It might be metacity. I have Compiz installed, but I think it's entirely disabled. Then I've got something called Emerald involved

Back in the day we just used XWindows and we got along just fine.

The only solution I've found so far is to go into:

System / Preferences / Appearance / Customize / Window Border

And select a different options. Some of the borders seem to have wider grab regions.

towheedm · 10-16-2011, 11:51 PM

You have mentioned two window managers, ie: compiz and metacity and two window decorator, ie: Metacity and Emerald.

Emerald is the window decorator for compiz but is not maintained anymore. You may select either compiz or metacity as the window manager. By default, if compiz is installed and running, it acts as the window manager and may use either Emerald or Metacity as it's window decorator. If it's not running, then Metacity becomes the default window manager and decorator.

The problem with grabbing the window borders for re-sizing the window stems from the theme in use and not because of the window manager as most people seems to think.

This problem is particularly irritating with the Ambiance theme and also the third party Macbuntu theme. These themes have the border widths set to 1 pixels so your mouse pointer must be exactly on the edge of the window border for grabbing.

Of course if you are familiar with the structure of Metacity themes, you can modify the theme accordingly. There have been some talk on Launchpad Ubuntu bug reports about this being corrected, at last after several years and over 400 subscribers to that particular bug report.

If you'd like to take a shot at it, here's some rather quick changes you can make to the theme:

Create a copy of the theme:

Code:

cp -r /usr/share/themes/Ambiance ~/.themes/MyAmbiance

Open the theme file in gedit:

Code:

gedit ~/.themes/MyAmbiance/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml

At the top of the file, lines 13-24 defines the frame geometry for a normal window:

Code:

<frame_geometry name="frame_geometry_normal" title_scale="medium" rounded_top_left="true" rounded_top_right="true"  rounded_bottom_left="false" rounded_bottom_right="false">
 	<distance name="left_width" value="1"/>
	<distance name="right_width" value="1"/>
	<distance name="bottom_height" value="1"/>
	<distance name="left_titlebar_edge" value="10"/>
	<distance name="right_titlebar_edge" value="10"/>
	<distance name="button_width" value="18"/>
	<distance name="button_height" value="20"/>
	<distance name="title_vertical_pad" value="12"/>
	<border name="title_border" left="2" right="2" top="0" bottom="0"/>
	<border name="button_border" left="0" right="0" top="1" bottom="1"/>
</frame_geometry>

Notice that left_width, right_width and bottom_height as all set to 1. This sets the 'thickness' of the edges to 1 pixel. The top 'thickness' is set by the title_border top attribute which is set to 0.

Change these four values to whatever thickness you wish, let's say 5 pixels 'thick':

Code:

 	<distance name="left_width" value="5"/>
	<distance name="right_width" value="5"/>
	<distance name="bottom_height" value="5"/>

	<border name="title_border" left="2" right="2" top="5" bottom="0"/>

Now set the theme:

Code:

gconftool-2 -t "string" -s /apps/metacity/general/theme "MyAmbiance"

Now try grabbing the edges for re-sizing. Is it now easier?

Also notice how much more different the theme looks with the 'thicker' borders. To correct this we must get into draw_ops.

Interested? I'm currently looking at doing a in-depth tutorial on Metacity theming. If I do, should be finished around December or so.