[Pan-users] Re: Window size and position is not remembered

[Duncan]

Camaleón posted on Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:04:55 +0200 as excerpted:

> I'm facing the following problem:
> 
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=568659
> 
> (the bug includes an image describing the issue)
> 
> At first, I thought this could be caused by the Pan version that is
> included in Debian Lenny (0.132), but I've recently installed Debian
> Squeeze (which includes Pan 0.133) and it happens the same.
> 
> Any hints on how to solve/bypass this? It's quite annoying having to
> resize and relocate the window every time :-)

[For the record and for those who don't wish to bother checking the link, 
the complaint isn't with pan's main window, but with the posting window.]

FWIW, while pan's in the gnome repo and uses their bugzilla, and back with 
gnome 1, was a gnome app, since the port to gtk2 back with IIRC 0.12, it 
has been a gtk2 app, not requiring the full gnome install.  So it's not 
really a gnome app, but a gtk app.  This is important for those of us who 
prefer kde (or other DE than gnome) in general, and wouldn't have pan 
installed if it were to drag in all those extra gnome dependencies. (The 
bug implies it's a gnome app, comparing it to "other gnome apps".)

Meanwhile, I don't know what window manager you're using, but at least 
kde's default kwin, has a method by which one can specify specific apps or 
windows and the non-default behavior one might wish them to have.  Years 
ago, when pan was under active development (it isn't so much any more), I 
requested and got Charles to properly fill out the window role fields for 
pan windows, so I could distinguish between the pan main window and the 
others (posting window, etc) and force the main window to a specific 
behavior (maximized horizontally, almost but not quite maximized 
vertically, no titlebar or border, and located just down the display a 
bit, so other window titlebars would peak out the top and I could switch 
to them by just clicking the titlebars, and to the pan main window again 
by just clicking it, since it's horizontally maximized and thus sticking 
out the side), without forcing all the other pan windows to the same size, 
location and behavior.

So assuming your window manager has the ability to set behavior for 
specific apps and windows using the window class, role and title 
characteristics, use that.  Pan has supported it for years, due to Charles 
filling my request. =:^)

Beyond that, window placement and sizing is a cooperative effort between 
the window manager and the window itself.  The window can (and often does) 
request a specific size and location (and other behavior, such as 
borderless, always-on-top, etc), but that's simply a recommendation to the 
window manager, which can ignore it and place it wherever it wants, at 
whatever size, and the window must cope with that, adjusting its internal 
layout accordingly, or making it hard on the user, when it fails to do so.

As for the posting window, I've noticed that its requested width, at 
least, appears to be determined by the size of the font -- it tries to be 
wide enough to display a full 80-char normal width line, with comfortable 
margins on either side.  Increase the size of the font, and the posting 
window should increase its default width accordingly.  Decrease the font, 
and at least down to the size of the toolbar, pan accordingly decreases 
its requested posting window width.  That seems about ideal, to me.

Vertically... I too find the posting window size a bit short.  
Fortunately, recent kwin versions have an option that when active, allows 
one to drag the window to either side, and it'll tile to maximized 
vertically, half-width horizontally (slightly larger than the default 
width, here, so it's fine, folks with smaller displays may find the drag-
to-top-to-maximize option more useful, tho I don't like that one and have 
it disabled).  Before that, I had a kwin setting for the posting window 
size, as well, but I've been able to delete it since the half-width full-
height drag-to-side tiling feature of kwin 4.4.

Meanwhile, it seems pan saves the geometry of most of its windows, and of 
the internal panes of the main window, in its preferences.xml file.  
Unfortunately, the posting window size and possibly location, seems to 
have been overlooked.  I'd call that a bug, but as mentioned above, pan's 
not really in active development any more.

However, there's a guy here in the pan community, K Haley, that has been 
running his own git repository, collecting the various useful community 
patches out there, and coding up some of his own.  There's a number of 
other useful patches in his version that aren't yet in an official 
released version (some are in the official repository, unreleased, some 
not), as well.  If you're upto it, install git if necessary, pull from his 
repo, and compile pan for yourself. =:^)  That's what many regulars in 
this group are doing.  There's no patch to save and use posting window 
size yet, and I'm not a coder so no guarantees, but it does sound like it 
should be a reasonably trivial patch, especially since the code is already 
there and used by other windows, and such a patch does seem to pass the 
usefulness test, so I'd not be surprised at all to see that feature in 
khaley's git repo quite soon, now that the request has been made. =:^)

"'Sup" to you! Here's the git:// URL.  =:^)

git://github.com/lostcoder/pan2.git

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman