Subject: FVWM: window placement idea / wish

From: Cameron Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 09:49:25 +1000

Is there a setting to say "don't overlap the window with the focus"?

Mozilla really really annoys me. I insists on scattering its windows
across the screen, which is a major PITA when middle-clicking my way down
an index or suchlike, making several windows, inevitably overlapping my
mouse at some point and screwing things up. I have an FvwmEvent monitoring
script, which catchs the Mozilla windows and puts them where I want with
FvwmCommand, but there's still this (temporal) window of opportunity
with with several windows strikes regularly.

Can I preempt Mozilla's placement fetishism more effectively?
-- 
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743        [email-masked]    http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/

Elephants are too big, sheep have bony knees, cats have little clawsies, dogs
bark in the middle of the night and birds are too tiny. So men will do.
	- [email-masked]
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From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 19:06:38 -0400

> Can I preempt Mozilla's placement fetishism more effectively?

Do you know you can get Mozilla to open new windows in tabs?

I don't normally like MIDI applications but in the case of the
browser, it seems like the best way to go.

-- 
Dan Espen                           E-mail: [email-masked]
444 Hoes Lane  Room RRC 1C-214      Phone: (732) 699-5570
Piscataway, NJ 08854
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From: Cameron Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 09:38:01 +1000

On 19:06 24 May 2002, Dan Espen <[email-masked]> wrote:
| Cameron Simpson <[email-masked]> writes:
| > Is there a setting to say "don't overlap the window with the focus"?
| > Mozilla really really annoys me. I insists on scattering its windows
| > across the screen, which is a major PITA when middle-clicking my way down
| > an index or suchlike, making several windows, inevitably overlapping my
| > mouse at some point and screwing things up. [...]
| > Can I preempt Mozilla's placement fetishism more effectively?
| 
| Do you know you can get Mozilla to open new windows in tabs?

Yes, but it's only useful to me about half the time (and my unconscious
keyboard habits know the "open new window" trick too well). For news
item windows the tabbed approach should work very nicely - I will be making
a conscious effort to use it more.

For other windows I want to deal with as standalone entities, either
for positioning purposes (eg to put then side by side) or for putting on
other desktops etc, it doesn't cut it. I already have fast and convenient
methods of window placement and arrangement mediated by FVWM, and using
a separate Mozilla-internal method for them seems ... clunky.

Also, Mozilla seems to want me to adopt a tabbed or new window approach
unilaterally. I would normally expect to use both. But I can't seem
to bind, say, middle-click to "new window" and something else equally
convenient such as "shift middle click" to "new tab". I must pick one or
the other and dig tediously through a menu popup for the the converse.
Other tools (fvwm, mutt, screen(?)) whih have key bindings let you attach
functions to arbirary things fairly easily. I gather such a mechanism
exists for Mozilla, but it's either ill documented or opaque. I have
yet to find a clear description of where to put such configs or what
functions one might attach to keys or mouse buttons.

Finally, I frequently create new Mozilla windows from the keyboard.
I have several tiny scripts which use netscape-remote to get mozilla
to open a window with a search result ("fm" for freshmeat, "google"
for google, etc) or more generally with an arbitrary URL. Of a morning I
routinely say "hi comics" which opens several comic pages at once and a
bit later "hi nerd" which opens some nerdly news channels like slashdot,
and so forth. In the current scheme I must wait for them all to pop up
(which is quite slow often) before I can do things. If they popped up
in the place I wanted (as my Netscape windows used to, for it does obey
its geometry settings) I could happily process email or something in my
shell window while it happened.

| I don't normally like MIDI applications but in the case of the
| browser, it seems like the best way to go.

MIDI? I only know the electronic music acronym. What do you mean here?

Now, Mozilla is merely the most painful offender in this regard.
While I have taken some care to place new windows, and new terminals
always pop up in exactly the same place for me (which is what I want)
it would be quite handy for random apps to use SmartPlacement, but to
avoid overlapping the focus window as a priority, or perhaps the mouse
alone (in focus follows mouse mode, which would suffice to keep that
window usable, though visible is also desirable). I rarely have much
root window showing, so new windows usually must overlap something.

On reflection I suspect I should have taken this to fvwm-workers.

I'll get Moz1.0rc3 this morning and see if its tabbedness is more
flexible. Thanks for the suggestion,
-- 
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743        [email-masked]    http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/

Archiving the net is like washing toilet paper!	- Leader Kibo

---

From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 20:04:30 -0400

Cameron Simpson <[email-masked]> writes:
> Yes,
...
> to bind
I'm not an expert, but Edit->Preferences->Navigator->Tabbed Browsing
has all the controls I felt I needed.

...
> MIDI? I only know the electronic music acronym. What do you mean here?

Gee, I thought MIDI was the right term for applications that
managed subwindows themselves, like StarOffice 5.2 or Visual C++,
but I can't find anything to confirm that with Google.
I must be loosing my mind...

> On reflection I suspect I should have taken this to fvwm-workers.

Its a pretty sure bet that everyone on fvwm-workers reads the fvwm
list too.

I'm avoiding addressing placement itself, mainly because Fvwm
has so many placement options I gave up trying to know what
they all do.

You seem to want to script and control the whole process.
If the windows have unique names, like the Slashdot one
will, you might consider using FvwmEvent to watch the window
being created and move it where you want.

---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 00:25:03 +0000

> I must be loosing my mind...

It is MDI (Multiple Document Interface) as opposed to SDI (Single DI).

> being created and move it where you want.

The problem here is that such script should return the final coordinates
before the window is mapped, not after.

If we would have such mechanism using module events, it is easy to code
a simple module in perl - FvwmPlacement - that implements all kinds of
placements and checks that a window is not out of screen and so on:

  UnderCursorPlacement  - should be done anyway
  CenterPlacement       - should be done anyway, because I need this :)
  AvoidFocusPlacement   - suggested by Cameron Simpson
  AvoidCursorPlacement  -   the same
  ConstantPlacement     -   the same
  and other placement policies per window...

Regards,
Mikhael.

---

From: Cameron Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 15:48:36 +1000

On 20:04 24 May 2002, Dan Espen <[email-masked]> wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but Edit->Preferences->Navigator->Tabbed Browsing
| has all the controls I felt I needed.

It lets me open a tab on BOTH middle and control click, or NEITHER.
I want a way to open a tab or open a new window or open inline. Without
tedious menus. Still, that's for the Mozilla lists, not here. My concern
is placement of new windows.

| You seem to want to script and control the whole process.
| If the windows have unique names, like the Slashdot one
| will, you might consider using FvwmEvent to watch the window
| being created and move it where you want.

In my first item I explained that I had written myself a tool to do this.
Works. But too slow. As I said, the new windows eventually appear over
my mouse, taking the focus (briefly, until they shift). And guess what
happens - my middle click, intended for the main index page I was using,
goes to the new window, which takes it as a request to go to the URL in
the cut buffer (typically not a URL at all).

The core issue is not that I can relocate these windows _once_ they
appear, but that in the gap between appearance and movement it's there
for real, and steals my focus, which is bad for the focused window and
the new window.
-- 
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743        [email-masked]    http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/

In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six
feet downward and covered with dirt.	- Blair P. Houghton
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From: Cameron Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 16:03:30 +1000

On 00:25 25 May 2002, Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]> wrote:
| On 24 May 2002 20:04:30 -0400, Dan Espen wrote:
| > You seem to want to script and control the whole process.

Actually, I wish I didn't have to.

| If we would have such mechanism using module events, it is easy to code
| a simple module in perl - FvwmPlacement - that implements all kinds of
| placements and checks that a window is not out of screen and so on:
|   UnderCursorPlacement  - should be done anyway
|   CenterPlacement       - should be done anyway, because I need this :)
|   AvoidFocusPlacement   - suggested by Cameron Simpson
|   AvoidCursorPlacement  -   the same
|   ConstantPlacement     -   the same
|   and other placement policies per window...

And, just thinking about this: Normal "smart placement", but make sure
the focus window stays above any new window. Hmm, ok for pointer based
focus and selected focuses - will this work ok with sloppy focus when
the pointer is outside the focus window but over the new window?
-- 
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743        [email-masked]    http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/

Some people have all the luck.  When I find the guy with mine, I'm gonna
kick his teeth in.

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 12:29:05 +0200

> is placement of new windows.

Why, left click on a link -> new or same window, middle click ->
new tab.  What's the problem?

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

-- 
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fon: ++49 (0) 7071/7965-0, fax: ++49 (0) 7071/7965-20
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From: Cameron Simpson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 11:18:33 +1000

On 12:29 27 May 2002, Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]> wrote:
| On Sat, May 25, 2002 at 03:48:36PM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:
| > On 20:04 24 May 2002, Dan Espen <[email-masked]> wrote:
| > | I'm not an expert, but Edit->Preferences->Navigator->Tabbed Browsing
| > | has all the controls I felt I needed.
| > 
| > It lets me open a tab on BOTH middle and control click, or NEITHER.
| > I want a way to open a tab or open a new window or open inline. Without
| > tedious menus. Still, that's for the Mozilla lists, not here. My concern
| > is placement of new windows.
| 
| Why, left click on a link -> new or same window, middle click ->
| new tab.  What's the problem?

Left click is always current window AFAIK. Middle click is new tab.
I have to reach into the cumbersome right-click menu for "Open in new
Window" to get a new window if I'm using tabbed browsing.

If there's something funky I can do with left click to force a new window
(alt-M1 or suchlike) let me know.

Basicly I _want_ single click access to all 3: new window, same window,
new tab.  A menu (click, aim, click again) is a PITA. I have migrated to
tabbed browsing and shifted my habits to want "new window" sufficiently
rarely to live with the menu.

All this is independent of the FVWM issue, which is that is having new
windows (of whatever app) occasionally obscuring the focus window with
the obvious undesirable results. For myself, to be able to force all
new windows (except transients I guess) to be strictly lower than my
current focus window would do.
-- 
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743        [email-masked]    http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.	- Nietzsche