x-open-point

@readwithai - X - blog - machine-aided reading

Open an application at a particular location and with a particular size when using X11.

Motivation

I was experimenting with positioning applications at particular positions in the interests of productivity while writing a blog post. Many applications support a --geometry option, however I found that this was far from always the cause and some applications like the popular image viewer feh did not support different gravities (i.e. you could not use a - for positions).

I decided to write a wrapper which externally start an application at a particular location.

Alternatives and prior work

wmctrl can move and resize a windows with the -e option. I am not aware of any tools that launch an application and then match the window id to the process id like this tool does.

Many applications have a -geometry or --geometry to provide this functionality but this is determined on an application-by-application basis, may be missing, and the features and inconsistent.

This application was partically inspired by the kstart launcher in KDE that launches an application while setting a few properties - though not the geometry.

Installation

You can install x-open-point with pipx:

pipx install x-open-point

Usage

The size and location for a window is specified using a syntax similar to X11 geometries.

To open xterm at 100 pixels from the left and 200 pixels from the top you can use:

x-open-point +100+200 xterm

node the plus sign before 100. This indicates that this is a distance from the left.

To open a window that is 200 pixels wide and 800 pixels tall you can run:

x-open-point 200x800 xterm

To open a window at the top-right corner you can use

x-open-point -0+0 xterm

Similarly you can use -0-0 for the bottom-right and +0-0 for the bottom-left.

To place the window at 100 from the left and 200 from the top and have it 300 pixels wide and 400 pixels high you can use:

x-open-point 300x400+100+200 xterm

In general, if you and expression of the form

expression := height "x" width x_gravity X y_gravity Y
height, width, X, Y := integer | percentage
x_gravity, y_gravity := "+" | "-"

An x_gravity of + means that the horizontal is from the left side of the screen to the window, - from the right side of the screen. Similarly for y_gravity. X is the horizontal distance from a screen edge to the window. Y is the vertical distance.

Support

If you found this tool useful, you could support it by giving me money ($3 maybe) on my ko-fi.

You could also my tools json-wmctrl which lists windows with additional information, or json-xwininfo. Or read some of my writing on how to take effective notes in Obsidian.

I've personally found that Obsidian has allowed me for drive-by note taking while coding quite valuable. You could read something I wrote about this on my blog.

About me

I am @readwithai, I make tools related to reading, research and agency sometimes using Obsidian.

You can follow me on X on my blog.