[Evolution] How to make Evolution remember its main window size--revisited

[George Reeke <reeke mail rockefeller edu>]

Dear colleagues,
   There are many postings on this topic in the list archives,
so don't read this if it bores you, but I can't find a usable
answer there, so I will bring it up again with a note on how I
tried and failed to solve the problem, in the hope that this
idea will tickle someone to speak up who has the final little
bit of information we need to defeat this beast.
   (I am stuck at Evolution 2.12.3 due to using RedHat EL 5.3,
gnome-desktop and metacity 2.16.0, but I'm guessing this is the
same in more recent versions judging by the ancient archive
postings.)
   When I start evolution after a reboot, the main window comes
up too small.  I adjust it and it stays that way, even if
restarted, for the rest of the session, but does not remember
between sessions, at least not all the time.
   Taking the attitude that I don't really care if this is an
evolution or a window manager issue, I just wanted to fix it, so
I went poking around in all the hidden files in my home directory,
and in ~/.gconf/apps/evolution/shell/view-defaults there is a
file called %gconf.xml that has entries called 'height' and
'width'.  This seems to be where it stores the window size.
If I kill evolution (with --force-shutdown), edit these entries,
and start evolution up again, most of the time it just resets to
the old small window size and edits these entries back to what
they were.  But strangely, I can find "magic numbers" that are
obeyed and stay put for the rest of the session.  New session--
old numbers back again.  I tried changing the file mode to 444, but
some code somewhere changes it back to 600 and I am again defeated.
   Obviously, what I need to fix this problem without delving into
the code is just to know where the global defaults are stored so I
can edit them.  I looked in /usr/share/evolution (I have root access)
but could not find what I was looking for there.
   So:  Desperate plea:  Does somebody know where the global default
window size is stored, so I and everybody else with this problem can
edit it and not have it automagically turn back to the original small
size??
   Thanks and the best to all,
George Reeke, Ph.D.
Head, Laboratory of Biological Modelling
The Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue
New York, NY  10065
email:  reeke rockefeller edu