Re: Metacity behavior when moving windows

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Wed, 2003-11-26 at 00:36, Leonardo Boiko wrote:
> I'm installing a LTSP network in a small news agency.  It's the
> classical thin client setup; their machines can't run newer versions
> of that popular OS and they're drowning under spam, viroses, etc.
> 
> We're using Gnome 2.4 as UI and I must say I'm impressed.  The system
> is beautiful, intuitive, usable and well internationalized.  However,
> I have a major complaint about Metacity.
> 
> I don't know about other countries, but in Brazil the most common
> resolution is 800x600, followed by 640x480.  GNU systems are
> attractive for giving value to these old PCs.  I understand the
> reasons for keeping windows below the top border, but that makes the
> WM unusable in our displays.  Most dialog boxes have the buttons in
> the bottom, and they stay off-screen.  Since you can't move windows
> up, you can't even see the buttons.
> 
> It's a shame, because Metacity would be perfect for this environment.
> I'll be forced to use Sawfish, and as much as I like it, I wouldn't
> like to expose its complexity to the already confused users.

The real problem here is that the programs which make dialog boxes that
big are broken (particularly *dialog* boxes). You really need to file
bugs against those programs as you find them.

Things should work on 640x480 displays. I suspect there are some
applications in GNOME that cannot fit all of there widgets into a window
that small, but again, that screams out for a redesign.

If an application requests a certain window size from the window
manager, it is meant to pay attention to the values it gets back from
the call, which is the size the window manager has assigned them.
Programs that do not do this and assume your monitor is some number of
pixels tall where some number is "700" or something are broken.

As a workaround solution in the interim, you can temporarily move your
panel to the side of the screen (just click on it and drag it to the
side) when such a broken application is running. In this way, you can
move the application vertically as much as you like.

Cheers,
Malcolm