[rox-devel] HOWTO set geometry, stickiness, and window decor

[Matthew W. O'P. <wei...@gr...>]

I promised I'd follow up, and here it is...

I compiled the rox CVS from the 29th of August over the weekend, applying
my patch to allow mouse wheel and button events to go directly to the
window manager. (For those of you just jumping in here, I use blackbox
as my window manager, which isn't currently netwm compliant.)

Thomas has added a class for the SOAP RPC entitled "Class". I now have
an XML file entitled appsDir.xml containing the following:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope">
 <env:Body xmlns="http://rox.sourceforge.net/SOAP/ROX-Filer">
   <OpenDir>
      <Filename>/home/matthew/Apps</Filename>
      <Style>Large</Style>
      <Class>AppsDir</Class>
   </OpenDir>
 </env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

In addition, I have installed bbappconf (available currently at
http://research.soc.staffs.ac.uk/~james/download/bbappconf_0.0.1-peak3.orig.tar.gz).
In addition, I have applied a patch that makes the program behave when
in an iconic or withdrawn (read: dockapp) state, as well as allowing for
certain "geometry" type tags. This patch is available at:
    http://www.orodu.net/~xor/bb/bbappconf.move_resize_fix_iconify.patch
I run bbappconf as 'bbappconf -i &' in my .xinitrc file.

bbappconf looks for the WM_CLASS name and class. The Class defined
in the SOAP RPC xml file above is the WM_CLASS name; class remains
"ROX-Filer". Based on the combination of class and name, it applies the
settings specified in a configuration file to the window in question
when it appears.

In my ~/.bbtools/bbappconf.bb file, I have a series of applications for
which I want to control either geometry, stickiness, starting workspace,
or toggling decor. I have the following entry now, corresponding to the
above SOAP RPC xml file:
  bbappconf.3.classHint.class:    ROX-Filer
  bbappconf.3.classHint.name:     AppsDir
  bbappconf.3.positionX:          698
  bbappconf.3.positionY:          0
  bbappconf.3.width:              324
  bbappconf.3.height:             200
  bbappconf.3.Stick:              true
This places a window 324x200 in the upper right corner of my desktop and
makes it sticky.

bbappconf, while originally developed as a blackbox tool, can be used
without blackbox. A file entitled bbappconf.nobb contains settings that
should be used if not using blackbox.

Also, the positionX, positionY, width, and height attributes are
undocumented. They are a part of the patch to bbappconf detailed above
-- this is why I include a sample configuration in here.

A big thanks to Thomas for adding the Class attribute to the SOAP RPC,
and also to x0r for the bbappconf patch (and pointing out the geometry
functionality in a recent post to the blackbox mail list).

--Matthew