Choosing position of new windows
 

Is it possible to make an arbitrary application window open wherever you like on the screen? I know some (like most terminals, and gnumeric) have a geometry flag, but this is not true of every application.

Could it be done using xdotool to grab and resize and move a window after it's been opened? Seems clunky.

I'm using MATE on Debian. Happy with an X or MATE solution.

Anything and everything is possible.

The last place I would look is @ linuxquestions.org, the first place I would look for this information is with X and/or Mate documentation or help contact, it is open source therefore that information should not be unavailable. Although, I can see how looking for a quick/easy answer is more appealing, kind of hard to actually learn much though.

Not exactly a newbie are you?

I've looked in MATE and X documentation. Maybe I am too dumb to understand the answer, but I didn't see anything that looked like an answer and I thought I would try a forum. I am not a newbie but I am not a coder. I use a Linux desktop as a productivity environment. It's not my hobby or my job to be a Linux expert. I was just hoping for a pointer to a useful tool or something. I'm quite prepared to learn a few things to help me do what I want but I am having trouble figuring out where to start. Thank you for your response.

I understand, and all I'm saying is that developers likely don't hang out here and thus your more likely to be sent on a wild goose chase here. If it were simple enough for wannabe geeks to do, it would be well documented all over blogger's web sites and a simply google search would land tons of hits. Which is why I recommend digging into X code and Mate code and consult software developers. And since you already know about "geometry flag", you likely know more than anybody here.
The title of these forums is linuxquestions, not open source software development questions.

In KDE 4, you can right-click on a window titlebar, select "More Actions," then select "Special Window Settings" or "Special Application Settings," and have access to many settings, including size and position. I suspect you can do the same in Plasma, but my Plasma machine is in another room. Trinity Desktop (which I am playing with in the hopes of podcasting about it) has similar settings. I have never used those settings.

In MATE (which is on that computer over there --->), I can't seem to find any such settings. If they are there, they are buried, like Prospero's staff, many fathoms deep.

I've found that, in window managers such as Fluxbox, "Remember" settings for size, position, and the like tend to more easily accessed.

There's lots of features I like in Plasma that are missing in Mate, I have Debian testing with Mate in a VM and don't spend much time with it because I have tons of power and memory therefore prefer spending my time in a big bowl of candy.

But if Mate had all the features of the heavy weight desktop environments, that would classify it as a heavy weight desktop environment also. It's basically Gnome 2 +, if you want the features of Gnome 3, install Gnome 3, etc.

Many thanks for all that
 

I guess I misjudged the complexity of the question. I thought I had missed something fairly straightforward, but it turns out to be much trickier than I expected. I guess I don't know enough to know what's hard and what's easy.

Thanks for the advice received. Will think about it some more.

Where and how large the application window is when it is opened is mostly a function of the program itself. Sometimes there is a file that records the last know configuration, so the window will open where and what size it was before the program was last closed. So, you could try that. Just open the program, make the window the way you want, close the program, open it again, and see it it kept its last position.

Thanks, I'll try that.

I'm looking at

https://linux.die.net/man/1/devilspie

and

https://linux.die.net/man/1/wmctrl

which I managed to not find until just now, despite searching around.

Solved
 

https://linux.die.net/man/1/wmctrl

wmcrtrl is a solution. It can query window positions and then move and resize them, so I can make a little script that starts a program, then picks it up and puts it where I want it.

Thank you, this is very helpful for me!

Spam. Reported

Here's a tool to get rectangular regions, btw.

slop


It might be in your distros repository.
Note: It also delivers "geometry" by default.

Spammer reported (definitely. I tried the link in Tor Browser).

edit: Geist is not the spammer. The spammer's post has been deleted apparently.

I too chose mate-desktop for it's simplistic and lightweight aspect. (I also realize it has somewhat dated look and feel).

I believe it's window manager macro is mostly responsible for, well window placement/management. There's a minimal bit at

~/.config/marco/sessions

Mate based applications generally have some gtk/geometry options. Others save their own info or have it "hard coded" for an initial window.