Re: Easier setting of start up layout

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Fri, 04 Apr 2003, Ben Hetland wrote:
> Lars Clausen wrote:
> > We can also compare with Gimp, which remembers the placement of all the
> > dialogs.  I don't know how WM-friendly it is, though.
>
> Perhaps it could use its saved settings unless the WM explicitly wanted
> to place the windows somewhere (e.g., because it had some remembered
> settings). So it's like obeying the WM, but implementing our own
> "intelligent" behavior if the WM doesn't care.
>
> Probably much easier said than done, though... Anyway, it's a feature I
> would love to see too, especially now that Dia's main windows always
> pops up to short vertically on my W2k box, so the elements/symbols panel
> almost disappear. First thing I tend to do is to expand it vertically.

I'm thinking it shouldn't be too hard, really.  The WM can always override
our settings if it wants to, so we can just go ahead and remember which
windows are open at what positions when we close.  Then when we start up,
we reopen those windows, asking for the positions.  Not hard at all.
Anybody up for a bit of hacking?

> Another nice feature would be not to display a new main panel each time
> I dbl-click on a dia file in Windows' explorer. I only need one of
> those, and the way it works now I'm never really sure which main panel
> goes with which diagram window. :-)

That is a very different problem.  That's a question of finding existing
instances of Dia that are running and tell them to open that diagram.
While it's wouldn't be hard to make some way to tell Dia to open a diagram,
figuring out if there's a Dia running that you want to connect to is
difficult.  I for instance have three emacsen running on this box, one of
which is remote.  I wouldn't want a doubleclick to open a document in a
different place than where I am, but figuring out the right one is hard.
It might be easier on Win32, which is more single-user oriented.  If there
are other (Unix) programs that do this *well*, we could follow their example.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HÃrdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?