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Author Topic: how to start program on desktop #xx (not autostart)  (Read 2440 times)

Offline ammi

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how to start program on desktop #xx (not autostart)
« on: November 02, 2010, 08:01:41 AM »
With FLWM it is easy to switch desktops "ctrl-F<xx>"
but how could i start from terminal a program e. g. on desktop #3?
Could anybody please help? I did not find anything about this.
« Last Edit: November 02, 2010, 08:11:17 AM by ammi »

Offline maro

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Re: how to start program on desktop #xx (not autostart)
« Reply #1 on: November 02, 2010, 07:08:48 PM »
My impression is that there is currently not provision to specify a particular FLWM desktop for the window of a X application. Whilst the '-display' option is supported by most (if not all) X apps to allow the selection of a specifc X server (but honestly how many users will run more than one), no such thing appears to be available for the selection of a specific FLWM desktop.

I only had a fairly cursory glance over the FLWM sources and could not identify a way to change the "desktop" value for a given "Frame" via a method external to the 'flwm' (or 'flwm_topside') process. I guess it would be feasible to create such an interface and a wrapper to start X applications that signals the target desktop to 'flwm', but I imagine that would be a fair amount of effort for fairly little gain.

Mind you I could be totally wrong, since I did not look to much into it.

Offline roberts

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Re: how to start program on desktop #xx (not autostart)
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2010, 01:26:53 AM »
You can always choose an alternate supported window manager that does.
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Offline ammi

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Re: how to start program on desktop #xx (not autostart)
« Reply #3 on: November 03, 2010, 02:36:56 AM »
thanks for your answer.
I already tried xdotool to change virtual desktop, but it does not work with FLWM.

It is possible to autostart applications on different desktops.

I found an example how this could be done:

mkdir -p ~/.wmx-auto/"Desktop 2"
ln -s /usr/bin/gimp ~/.wmx-auto/"The Gimp"
cat > ~/.wmx-auto/"Desktop 2"/"Terminal" <<EOF
#! /bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/rxvt -ut
EOF
chmod +x !*


This would autostart the applications but I did not find any possibility to manage this
when FLWM has already started.
I thought there should be a command to do this.

Offline ammi

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Re: how to start program on desktop #xx (not autostart)
« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2010, 05:15:18 AM »
You can always choose an alternate supported window manager that does.

you're right! I tried Fluxbox and this has everything i want with 1 MB bigger OS ;)
xdotool also works fine, thanks.