[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] x11 vo drivers override user settings for window placement

[The Wanderer]

Reimar Doeffinger wrote:

> Hello, On Mon, Jun 25, 2007 at 07:14:33AM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> [...]
> 
>> I mentioned this on -svnlog at the time, and there was a patch
>> posted on 06-20-2006 which AFAIR did not fix the problem for me.
>> Since I had no arguments beyond the ones I had already used, and
>> Reimar, being the only developer involved in the discussion, did
>> not seem remotely persuaded by those - and indeed, given that the
>> patch he posted did not fix the problem I had described, did not
>> seem to entirely understand the problem itself - I more or less
>> dropped the subject.
> 
> The only thing I remember was about making MPlayer remember the
> position when playing more than one file, which would be something
> entirely different.

The problem which was posted, which r18718 fixed, was that when playing
multiple files in sequence with the -fs option and changing back from
fullscreen on something other than the first file the window would not
be in the center of the screen. (Or perhaps "where it was supposed to
be", which I think was the same thing.)

The problem I had was that the commit broke support for window-manager
location memory, which seemed - and still in many ways seems! - to be a
completely unrelated issue.

> And I am of course not convinced since both from a theoretical
> standpoint it makes more sense for the geometry option to actually
> work since it's already there, it simplified the code and lastly I
> had the impression it actually _reduced_ the overall number of
> complaints - but maybe I just scared everyone into shutting up :-P.

I don't remember there having been complaints about positioning before
the one which prompted you to make that change. I don't remember there
having been complaints about positioning since then, either, other than
my own "this broke WM memory" at the time.

>> However, the fact remains that I am *not* happy about being
>> completely unable - short, again, of more experimentation to find
>> correct values for -geometry than seems reasonable (given that the
>> WM can handle this automagically) - to have MPlayer appear at any
>> location *other* than the center of the screen.
> 
> Well, finding the right -geometry options should be a matter of
> seconds (-geometry +xpos+ypos) unless you want some different
> behaviour than it offers.

The trouble is that the correct values for 'xpos' and 'ypos' are not
remotely obvious, and have to be found by extensive experimentation -
whereas with window-manager position memory, I can just move the window
to the desired place, tell the WM "remember this", and have it figure
out the correct X/Y automatically.

It would probably be possible to obtain the X and Y coordinates the WM
uses for positioning the remembered window, but I have no idea how and
it - once again - seems like more effort than should be necessary.

Except for when calling MPlayer from a program which (one may presume)
has its own ways of determining what the appropriate coordinates are,
-geometry seems so unwieldy as to be effectively useless IMO.

> I guess it wouldn't be too much of an effort to extend -geometry by
> something that says "don't set position", but to me it seems to minor
> to invest my time (as an illustration why: at LinuxTag I alone had 3
> people ask about some placement and fullscreen issues related with
> xinerama but none about general placement).

<no immediate comment>

> This also matches my overall experience, I remember lots of
> complaints about the default placements the windows managers did but
> besides these two none about the forced MPlayer way...

Default window manager placement can be problematic, yes - I almost
invariably prefer the "center of the screen" to what the WMs would
choose by default. *However*, once I have chosen the position I want and
told the WM about that, then the WM's position is *not* its default
anymore - and MPlayer honored that placement before r18718, but has
ignored it since then.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.