GNOME and geometry specifications

[Jim Stewart <jim fweep com>]

howdy.

i was wondering if there's some reason why almost no gnome applications
support a command-line geometry specification?  the only one i know of that
does is gnome-terminal, and it appears that only the size hints are followed;
the position hints are ignored.

i realize that most (all?) gnome-aware applications record at least some of
their geometry information so that when they are restarted by gnome-session,
they show up where you left them, but it's pretty annoying to have to manually
place all windows when first starting them.

i use fvwm2, which is not a gnome-aware window manager, but i don't think this
(IMO) problem is resolved by using a gnome-aware wm.

one of the biggest problems i have with this is that even those applications
that do record their positional geometry for restarting purposes always record
it based on their physical position on the screen.  this is a problem when you
use a virtual window manager like fvwm2, because the virtual positions are
often something like +1824+1209, but in my case gnome applications end up
recording their position as +224+9 (center window in a 3x3 grid of 1600x1200
virtual desktops).

is there some simple geometry handling mechanism that i'm overlooking?
command line -geometry exists in even the most basic non-gnome X applications.

thanks,
jim

+ Jim Stewart
| jim@fweep.com
+ http://www.fweep.com/