Arch Linux

Leye

Member

From: Heidelberg, Germany

Registered: 2008-09-03

Posts: 96

Make Metacity to maximize all windows (with Devilspie)

Hi! I hope someone can help me with Devilspie. Here's what I'd like to do:

On my netbook, I set up a standard GNOME environment with Metacity as its window manager. I use Metacity because of its integrated composition that I need for GNOME-Do's Docky. Since the netbook's display isn't that big, I don't want to bother with pixel-by-pixel window positioning, instead I just want every window to be maximized except pop-up windows, error messages, etc.

For this task, I discovered Devilspie, and now I'm trying to configure it as described. Right now I'm using a seperate *.ds for every application, which is OK since I don't use many different applications on my netbook (nevertheless, is there another way?).

Most of the *.ds look like this:

(if
                (is (window_class) "epiphany") (maximize)
)

I'm using "xprop | grep WM_CLASS\(STRING\)" to get the window_class. However, this alone doesn't seem to work for some applications. For instance, I cannot modify gedit in this way, and I wonder what I have to do to apply Devilspie on it.

What is the best way to apply Devilspie's rules on an application? I tried a combination of application_name and window_class, but I'm still not sure whether this always works. I wonder where exactly do I have to look for application_name, because even my desktop is on German, some applications seem to use an internal English name (Nautilus for instance is "File manager", although it's title is shown on German).

Next to application_name and window_class, would window_name help to apply Devilspie on it?

If someone else here uses Devilspie, I'd be curious to hear how you use it.