Re: Preserved Window Placement

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

> order they were in. Most applications seem to remember whether or not 
> they were maximized previously. But all of these features are part of 
> the individual programs (and extensions in Firefox's case).

It's supposed to be a property of the X session management, including
automatically restarting applications that were running before (which
Gnome doesn't bother to do). This is usually managed by a mix of the
toolkit and the X window manager (with a little necessary help from the
app).

> It seems to me that the position and dimensions of a window in the 
> context of a user's desktop (assuming that the dimensions of the desktop 
> itself don't change, but even Apple hasn't solved that challenge last I 
> checked) could be boiled down to 4 numbers saved as the application is 
> closed (width, height, x, y [from top-left corner possibly]).

You missed a couple of properties but basically yes. However you need to
know what the contents were for a correct restart too. Consider
restarting an image viewer app with 3 windows open , you need to know
which one goes where and what image was in it to restore it correctly.
This is why the application has to be involved.

> I would think simply preserving the specific absolute position of the 
> windows of the various applications a user regularly employs would be 
> much easier than calculating a dynamic position on the fly every time a 
> new application is launched.

Some window managers can do this. It's not always as useful as you might
think IMHO. For certain uses (eg Kiosks) its of course essential !

> It's just weird that KDE, Gnome and every other Linux desktop doesn't 
> seem to even be discussing this topic.

Gnome is obsessive about making everything work to its specific diktat
without configurability. If you look at configurable window managers
you'll find all this exists and far far more. Things like window managers
for tiny screens that open apps full screen and flip between them are
decades old, window managers that tile apps without overlapping and so on.
(its a pity for them that the Windows 8 metro people didn't take a
good look at tiling window managers on touchscreens 8))

Alan