X (xinerama) doesn't restore window locations

[David Chmelik]

On Tue, 23 Aug 2022 08:54:07 +0100, Carsten Haitzler wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Aug 2022 02:18:53 -0000 (UTC) David Chmelik
> <dchmelik at gmail.com> said:
> 
>> I usually always have my PC on, but of course go away and come back.
>> Sometimes the screens (three) go inactive and sometimes I turn them
>> off. Every time I make them active again, no X program has its location
>> restored but in fact every one is moved somewhere else: often/usually
>> to another screen.  It's a problem with every X window manager (WM) &
>> desktop environment (DE) I ever used including KDE 3 (and TDE), 4, 5,
>> and XFCE almost as long.  Is this a xinerama problem and can it be
>> fixed?
> 
> if you are using xinerama then this would not be happening as it's a
> fixed setup for the server (or was decades ago when i last used it).
> everyone moved on to using xrandr to configure screens. this can be
> dynamic and it's your wm/de environment that would handle things like
> detecting a screen disconnected and reconfiguring things. you issue is
> not with xorg but with the wm/de's you choose.

Okay, I was mistaken: then it's xrandr.

> as someone who writes these... i can tell you i have EXPLICITLY
> supported your case in enlightenment. it will auto-restore windows to
> the screen they were on if it sees a disconnect then a reconnect if you
> have not reconfigured (changed geometry) of those screens in between the
> disconnect and the reconnect. it detects re-connects automatically and
> restores that screen to whatever it was configured to last time it saw
> it (based on output name + edid blob).
> 
> so i'd say you haven;t tried enough wm's and de's ... as the one i wrote
> does what you want. i even just tested it now - did exactly what it was
> programmed to do :)

I've tried dozens but most (including Enlightenment, E) don't do what I 
want... I'm willing to try E again, but last time there was much more 
setup to do (some I couldn't figure out) that KDE/TDE & XFCE already did 
years/decades ago.

I'd rather use CDE or NsCDE but there's a lot they don't do yet also.  I 
know XFCE can be made to work like them (after I get a dependency) and E 
used to be able to work like them, i.e. like Windows 3 in which you could 
have program manager groups and not just a start menu.  Someone wrote a 
script to setup XFCE that way but if I worked similarly again (setting up 
a file manager that way) I wouldn't have time to setup hundreds .desktop 
files without a script.  I liked E a lot and would rather use a WM instead 
of DE if possible...