[comp.windows.x] -geometry or how do I specify size and location independently?

karney@lyman.pppl.gov (Charles Karney) (08/22/90)

I want to specify the SIZE of my xload windows in .Xdefaults via, e.g.,
    XLoad*geometry:			94x94
while the LOCATION I want specified via the command line, e.g.,
    xload -geo -100-0 &

Unfortunately the size specification in .Xdefaults is then ignored.  It
seems that geometry is overloaded.  There should be separate ways of
specifying the size and location.  Comments?  Any ideas for how to do what
I want?

rlh2@ukc.ac.uk (Richard Hesketh) (08/22/90)

In article <570@lyman.pppl.gov> Karney@Princeton.EDU writes:
>I want to specify the SIZE of my xload windows in .Xdefaults via, e.g.,
>    XLoad*geometry:			94x94
>while the LOCATION I want specified via the command line, e.g.,
>    xload -geo -100-0 &
>
>Unfortunately the size specification in .Xdefaults is then ignored.  It
>seems that geometry is overloaded.  There should be separate ways of
>specifying the size and location.  Comments?  Any ideas for how to do what
>I want?

There are.  The geometry resource is just a hint to the window manager.
This hint is also used along with the x, y, width and height resources
of the top level shell.  Depending on the type of shell being used
you can set these resources separately to the geometry resource.

What you want to specify in .Xdefaults is:

	XLoad.width: 94
	XLoad.height: 94

and still use
	xload -geom -100-0 &
etc.

This also lets you do ...
	xload -geom x300		# explicit height of 300 pixels
	xload -geom 200			# explicit width of 200 pixels
	xload -geom x300+4+4		# height = 300 @ (4,4)
with the missing dimension taken from the user defaults.