Ever since my distro upgraded to XFCE version 4.12, I seem to have lost the elegant way XFCE managed the placement of windows on my desktop. Previously, In version 4.10, XFWM4 managed to compute smartly where to place windows so as to reduce overlapping. It no longer seems to do that. For example, the second instance that I open of Firefox is directly overlaid on top of the first one, i.e. both are attached to the top left of the screen. Is there a setting (not the Window Manager Tweaks Placement option, which achieves a different effect) that I can change for myself or is this some coding change that I cannot alter?
Seems has changed that code with commit b42ba05: Author: Nick Schermer <nick@xfce.org> Date: Sat Dec 1 13:43:44 2012 +0100 Optimize smart placement (bug #5785). Make efficient steps in smart placement code. This both saves a large amount of loops in the code and also make the windows align next to each other, instead of a possible gap of (x % 8) pixels.
Reverting the commit does not help, in fact it's a brilliant piece of code ^_^ that saves a ton of roundtrips in finding the optimal place (and does it better too). What you should've done instead is cherry-pick adf918d111d60e5aa3591b38ad920354b74486e8 from master. The code was broken in commit 41d20680e6fc9da40560f906e15c1200de8189f2 where you changed the loop check.
(In reply to Nick Schermer from comment #2) > Reverting the commit does not help, in fact it's a brilliant piece of code > ^_^ that saves a ton of roundtrips in finding the optimal place (and does it > better too). > > What you should've done instead is cherry-pick > adf918d111d60e5aa3591b38ad920354b74486e8 from master. The code was broken in > commit 41d20680e6fc9da40560f906e15c1200de8189f2 where you changed the loop > check. Ah right, indeed - Pushed in branch 4.12
I am not sure what happened here but I don't get how the status got set to fixed when the issue I reported remains unchanged. I get that if you open a series of small windows (say, terminal emulators) then the second is nicely butted up to the right side of the first (no 8 pixel or any other kind of gap) and the third is nicely tucked under the first (no gap), with the fourth completing the neat arrangement. The fifth then sits directly over the first, and so on. Unskilled as I am with computer coding, all I can say is your neat coding seems to have jettisoned some very nice user experience of larger windows (browsers and email clients tend to be larger than terminal emulator windows) not being overlaid on top of each other. When they are, then almost invariably the very next thing you have to do is move that second instance of Firefox (to get back to the example in my original problem report). This seems to me to be putting the "elegance" of the code above the "elegance" of the user experience and is not, in my opinion, a forward step. What do I have to do to request a reversion to the placement policy of seeking minimum overlap of ALL new windows that we had up to version 4.10? In the meantime, I have installed xfwm4-better-smartplacement, which goes some way to restoring a more useful placement methodology. Be better if we could find some way to regain what we've lost here.
(In reply to Wendy Sporr from comment #4) > I am not sure what happened here but I don't get how the status got set to > fixed [...] The status has been changed to fixed because a fix was committed by Nick in git master and later cherry-picked in the xfce-4.12 branch as well. > [...] when the issue I reported remains unchanged. You mean you pull the latest code from git, built it and installed it and yet you still experience the same issue? > > [...] > > In the meantime, I have installed xfwm4-better-smartplacement, I have no idea what this is. > which goes some way to restoring a more useful placement methodology. Be > better if we could find some way to regain what we've lost here.
Thank you. Your style of speaking when you techies talk to each other confused me a little. But now that an update to xfwm4 has filtered through my Arch repos, I can see the change you have made. I am now on version 4.12.1-2 of xfwm4 and window placement is again smart - smarter than before I suspect. Nice work.
*** Bug 11732 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***