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#1 2013-04-24 06:55:39

dawid.loubser
Member
Registered: 2012-08-09
Posts: 23

[SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

Hello all fellow early-adopters :-)

A very annoying quirk I've noticed, moving from GNOME 3.6 to 3.8, is that it no longer remembers, nor retains, the size/positions I set for many of my application windows. For example, my mail client (Evolution) is sized to fill most of my screen (centrally), with Empathy and Skype as long narrow windows on both sides - giving me a nice, broad "communications" overview on that particular desktop (with dev tools etc open on others).

On 3.6, this layout was retained during my session, as well as next time I started these apps up.

In GNOME 3.8, not only does it insist that these windows are always started as small little bunched-up windows that I need to resize, but every time a window displays a notification/warning (message in internal yellow bar inside the window - such as loss of internet connection, mail retrieval failure etc) it resizes the windows spontaneously to a stupid, small size that overlays the other windows. This is driving me crazy!

Where can I learn a bit more about how window sizing / positioning works in GNOME 3.8, or is it finally time to switch to awesome wm? I want to love GNOME 3.8, I really do. It's so slick, but so... unpolished.

I want to dig in an assist with problems like these, but I need some pointers to some background material first to understand the problem. Is it the window manager? Is it the app?

** UPDATE: Doing a full system upgrade, as of May 18, 2013, has resolved this annoying problem. My windows now stay where they belong, and start with the same size they were closed with. GNOME is now pleasant to use again :-)

Last edited by dawid.loubser (2013-05-21 13:37:25)

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#2 2013-04-24 08:29:24

drtebi
Member
Registered: 2013-02-09
Posts: 126

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

In case you do want to try another desktop environment... try Enlightenment e17.

I was quite confused going from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3, and played around with many DE alternatives as a result. Enlightenment does not see to have much fame, but once you dig through the configuration settings, you will find some great features in there. Some things I really like about it:
- It's fast, with a few simple but not annoying annimation options
- Great Launcher ("Everything Launcher")
- Configure key-bindings, mouse-bindings, and edge-bindings. Many useful features here, like centering a window on a keyboard shortcut, resize and move a window, launch custom commands etc.
- Nice clock
- Completely configurable task bars
- Supports seemless multi-monitor setup (aka xinerama) out of the box, which makes an IBM T221 monitor 100% usable

The file manager is neat but lacks features, I use Nemo instead.

Give it a try... https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Enlightenment

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#3 2013-04-24 08:52:01

dawid.loubser
Member
Registered: 2012-08-09
Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

Thanks for the suggestion drtebi - I'll give it a try.
I really like GNOME 3.x though (and would like to understand the windowing behaviour), but if the annoying quirks are insurmountable, I will happily switch.

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#4 2013-04-24 17:15:31

drtebi
Member
Registered: 2013-02-09
Posts: 126

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

I understand... when I first tried Gnome Shell I thought it had quite some potential, too. It's just that feature changes and bugs got things too messed up in my view.

As far as I understand, X11 should allow you to specify an application's window geometry (position and size) on the command line. You may want to look into that, here is a summary of how it works: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guide_to_X … g_Programs

This should help you getting applications to start with the window size/position you want. Test this from the command line, and once the -geometry option works fine for a program, you can add that to the "Exec" line in the applications .desktop entry. These .desktop entries are located in /usr/share/applications/. Best practice is to copy an entry from there to your local directory (~/.local/share/applications) and edit the entry there--it will then take precedence over the original entry. So e.g.:

cp /usr/share/applications/empathy.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
nano ~/.local/share/applications/empathy.desktop

Once in nano, find the "Exec" line, and add the -geometry option at the end.

As the article above mentions, it does not work for every application, but it's worth a try.

By the way... in Enlightenment you just resize and position the application window (or any notification window for that matter), right click on it's title bar and choose "Window->Remember". The window manager will then ask you what to remember (size, position, locks...); it just works. Another good reason to give Enlightenment a try smile

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#5 2013-04-24 22:52:29

roepi
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2012-01-24
Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

Hi,

I can confirm the resize problem with the latest Gnome 3.8 update; especially Evolution Mail does not store any settings at all anymore. I found the following upstream bug for Evolution, and they blame glib for this.
I monitored the settings as stated there, and if I set the size to e.g. 1024x768 using dconf, these settings reset to 640x480 right after Evolution starts. So somehow the application is able to write to dconf settings, but always resets width and height to a low resolution size. Checking a few other applications revealed that more applications are affected, like dia, evince, liferea, inkscape etc. All those definitely worked remembering size with Gnome 3.6.
Not sure if this is an Arch packaging problem or an upstream bug (I assume the latter)? Any ideas to resolve this issue are very welcome.
Best regards,

christoph

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#6 2013-04-25 03:21:13

bwat47
Member
Registered: 2009-10-07
Posts: 638

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

I saw the same bug in opensuse 12.3 with the gnome 3.8 repo, I don't think its an arch problem.

Most apps I use seem fine luckily, only happens to empathy for me atm. Libreoffice, nautilus, firefox, gimp, hexchat, thunderbird all seem to behave. When I was using opensuse it was ridiculously annoying though because yast would always open in the tiniest window possible no matter what.

Last edited by bwat47 (2013-04-25 03:46:43)

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#7 2013-04-25 06:19:20

rosslagerwall
Member
Registered: 2013-01-27
Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

I'm pretty sure you're coming across these bugs, and no, using awesome does not fix it sad

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=696882
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=698571

It seems to have been a regression in GTK 3.8.1.

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#8 2013-04-25 09:29:05

drtebi
Member
Registered: 2013-02-09
Posts: 126

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

Interesting. I just noticed that "Disks" (one of the few gnome-apps I use at all) does not remember size and position either.

I do not want to sound like I am advertising for Enlightenment... however, the window manager can override size and position settings of any app. Worked just fine with "Disks", it's now always centered on the desktop and at the size I last resized it too.

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#9 2013-04-25 13:40:33

bwat47
Member
Registered: 2009-10-07
Posts: 638

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

Man I really hope this gets fixed soon, because aside from this one incredibly annoying issue I am loving gnome 3.8.

I get the feeling gnome badly needs more beta testers, sizable regressions like this in "stable" releases happen way too often sad

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#10 2013-05-01 04:01:58

lmello
Member
From: Brazil
Registered: 2012-11-06
Posts: 300

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

dawid.loubser wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion drtebi - I'll give it a try.
I really like GNOME 3.x though (and would like to understand the windowing behaviour), but if the annoying quirks are insurmountable, I will happily switch.

Man I love GNOME 3.x. I admire the courage they had to change, basically, everything, and I find myself more productive with my GNOME 3 Arch box than with my good ol' Slackware KDE 4 box. I just hate those bugs - for example I filed a task in their bugtracker for this window resize problem I have with gedit. If it's a love/hate relationship, I think it's marriage ^_^

With the 3.8 upgrade, deadbeef was having a similar problem with window size/position. I just recompiled it against the latest GTK+3 package upgrade (that came after the 'big upgrade' here on Arch) and it was fixed. But not with gedit sad

bwat47 wrote:

Man I really hope this gets fixed soon, because aside from this one incredibly annoying issue I am loving gnome 3.8.

I get the feeling gnome badly needs more beta testers, sizable regressions like this in "stable" releases happen way too often sad.

I get the exact same feeling. Well bugs exist everywhere, there's no denying. But I think it would be wiser to 'alternate' the nature of each major stable release - one focusing on new features and one focusing on fixing bugs. For example if the only new features in GNOME 3.10 were the AppsFolder full implementation and the introduction of gnome-calendar, and the rest of the development cicle being devoted to fix bugs, I'd be more than happy.

Like Fedora and Ubuntu, the fixed 6-month release cycle colaborates with the bugs. They don't do like Debian or Slackware which are released 'when they are ready'.

EDIT: fout (yet) another bug. At least with facebook chat (haven't tested with other telepathy plugins) the buddy tray icon appear duplicate. Anybody with the same issue?

Last edited by lmello (2013-05-02 14:06:06)


Fundamental Axiom of the Universe (aka Murphy's Law): Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
First Digital Deduction: Nothing obeys Murphy's Law so well as computers.
Second Digital Deduction: Everything go wrong at least once.
Third Digital Deduction: Things go wrong even when there's absolutely no possibility of anything go wrong.

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#11 2013-05-03 05:37:55

andybz
Member
Registered: 2012-10-10
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

Yeah, I just discovered this one myself. Don't they test this stuff before they release it? How did this ever get past QA!?

Have you tried watching something in Totem? It's impossible to scale up the video at all. Very frustrating.

I tried applying a couple of the patches for GTK+3 floating around the bug reports, but haven't got it working yet. Has anyone else managed find a patch that works yet?

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#12 2013-05-03 07:10:48

rosslagerwall
Member
Registered: 2013-01-27
Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

andybz wrote:

I tried applying a couple of the patches for GTK+3 floating around the bug reports, but haven't got it working yet. Has anyone else managed find a patch that works yet?

Maybe try GTK 3.8.0. I think the resize problem was introduced in 3.8.1.

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#13 2013-05-03 07:37:05

jjacky
Member
Registered: 2011-11-09
Posts: 347
Website

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

andybz wrote:

I tried applying a couple of the patches for GTK+3 floating around the bug reports, but haven't got it working yet. Has anyone else managed find a patch that works yet?

As said here have you tried reverting 38b62e46 then applying the patch from that bug report? Has solved the issues I've faced.

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#14 2013-05-04 03:13:11

andybz
Member
Registered: 2012-10-10
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

jjacky wrote:

As said here have you tried reverting 38b62e46 then applying the patch from that bug report? Has solved the issues I've faced.

I re-read your comment, and properly reverted that original change along with your patch. Seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks

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#15 2013-05-07 14:33:06

roepi
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2012-01-24
Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED] GNOME 3.8 annoying window resize problem

@jjacky

I also did as you said and it looks like my issues are solved as well, at least Evolution and Liferea are behaving normal (although Dia and Inkscape still start with minimal size, however I use those seldom, so no big deal at current). Thanks.

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