an xwindows question

[solarbird]

On my digital audio workstation, I run two monitors, and I do it in xinema mode. This is because Ardour – like the overwhelming majority of apps ever – wants all its windows to be on one desktop. xinema mode is how Xwindows does that.

It’s great for Ardour. I have mixer on one screen, editor on another, it’s lovely.

But a couple of system updates ago, a lot of apps started getting “better” ideas about where “centre of screen” is, by which I mean, instead of getting centre of monitor, they were getting centre of desktop.

Which means that many applications now start split in half across two monitors. Including, annoyingly, Ardour’s startup menu and open-file menu; it remembers opening positions for main windows but not startup dialogues or splash screens.

This is incredibly annoying.

So is there a way for it to get, idk, “monitor centre” when it asks for “screen centre,” or to set a default location for unspecified-position windows, or… stuff? Because yeah. Annoying. So annoying.

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Comments

[vatine]

If I remember the low-level X11 protocol correctly, there's no "centre of screen" API call, there's just "give us the size of the screen", then let the application figure out where the centre is. So as far as any X11 client knows, you simply have a screen that's very wide.

Normally, applictaions really only allow specifying "first actual window" position and geometry (well, I guess technically, both window size and position are covered under the "geometry" umbrella). There may be a setting in the program to allow specifying what "gravity" you want auxilliary windows to open at (if there is, it's probably limited to the product of {left,middle,right} X {top,middle,bottom}) but at a low level, X11 is unfortunately more about functionality than protocol.

However, as an API for "interact with users", it's not half bad, even with somewhere like 30 years on its neck.

[mdlbear]

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