#157 Window and Dialog positioning

[Anonymous]

Xfe seems completely to ignore hints from the window manager, how and where to position the main window and dialogs. This is bad behaviour, because the window manager expresses the users wishes.

But it comes worse: Xfe is completely inconsitent in this behaviour. While the main window starts at a static position, which can't be influenced by the user (afaik), some dialogs will be located under the mouse (e. g.: will you delete this folder), while other dialogs are located in the center of the desktop (hey, this folder isn't empty. Will you really delete it?).

But it comes worse: In a multiple screen environment, the desktop may contain a lot of monitors (xinerama), But not every monitor is powered on in every situation. Or a Desktop may be defined much bigger, than the monitors resolution. Or the desktop of a normal computer will be remoted by a notebook or by a smartphone. Or... In all this cases the center of the desktop might be far out of the sight of the user. So the user can not see the dialog, he has no idea, that there is a dialog straying somewhere in the desktop. Hey, the first dialog window was positioned under mouse! How shall the user guess, that xfe's behaviour is as erratic as DSKs sexual life! He only sees that xfe is not working.

Under mouse positioning is a good choice in the most cases (even for the main window!) . This is the only acceptable choice, as long as the user has no way to influence the positioning (that's what the window manager hints mentioned above are good for). It's medieval behaviour to position windows in fixed positions, as long as they are not user defined. A program like xfe has absolutely no knowledge about the real environment it's running in. At best it has knowledge about the virtual environment, but today (and since a lot of years) a virtual desktop don't reflect the real hardware.

[Roland Baudin]

This is hopefully fixed in Xfe 1.32.5. I replaced all screen centered hints with owner centered hints. Thus, there should be no more issues on multiple display machines.
Thanks for your interest in Xfe.
RB

[Thomas Strausbaugh]

Hello,

I am using IceWM and I am having the issue of Xfe wanting to only open on the left screen instead of my primary center screen. It would be nice if it defaulted to the primary X monitor or remembered its last location. Thanks.