devilspie2 - Overview

Overview

“Always on Visible Workspace” (#AoVW) is a desktop environment feature that’s handy for organizing workspaces by task, topic, context. Not all applications adhere to this AoVW. AoVW doesn’t always persist across Suspend/Resume and never persists across logouts and re-starts. #devilspie2 (dp2) addresses these AoVW issues and creates other useful possibilities.

Approach

• Mine: identify existing gnome configs to tweak; hope for sanity and clarity and managability
• dp2: create Lua configs with directives and functions abstracting a bunch of the same

vanadium’s answer recommending dp2.

The devilspie2 repo on gh.

dp2 config directives / functions

stick_window(); addresses the AoVW issues I set out to solve.

These made other useful possibilities straightforward

• maximize();
• set_window_size (xsize, ysize)
• set_window_geometry (xpos, ypos, xsize, ysize)
• get_application_name()
• get_window_geometry()

What I got

• ~/.config/devilspie2 is a reasonable location.
• Added the dp2 README to the same location
• vsc.lua keeps my ToDo VSCode Workspace running Always on Visible (Gnome) Workspace
• moz.lua and pom.lua configs have grown to include stick and size for other apps, specific terminals and browser windows.

e.g.

-- brain.fm and Pomodoro Logger AoVW at set window size even if off-screen 

if (string.match(get_window_name(), "brain.fm")) then
    stick_window(); // **AoVW**
    set_window_size (400, 400);
end

if (string.match(get_window_name(), "Pomodoro Logger")) then
    stick_window();
    set_window_size (850, 600);
end

-- Terminal, Okular AoVW - by application or window name  

if (get_application_name() == "Terminal") then
    stick_window();
end

if (string.match(get_window_name(), "Okular")) then
    stick_window();
end

Lessons Learned

• Rapid-Reframing is Helpful
• That it Works allows #De-Prioritizing Why it works
• When Why is still Urgent and Important, puruse it. Else replace it with the Next Thing that Is.

#dePrio #rePrio #reallocate

TODO: [[devilspie2 - II]]