HOWTO: Automating Gnome with Devil's Pie

[Kvark]

This really cuts down on the time spent arranging windows when in gnome

Thanks for the .devilspie.xml file you gave me before in another thread Wolki!

[souled]

Awesome guide, thanks.

Couple questions. When do you use the forward slash, and what's wrong with my flurb:

  <flurb name="Terminal">
    <matchers>
      <matcher name="DevilsPieMatcherWindowName"/>
        <property name="window_title" value="eric@motherland:"/>
	<property name="window_role" value="gnome-terminal-8739-454923534-1129609311"/>
      </matcher>
    </matchers>
    <actions>
      <action name="DevilsPieActionHide"/>
	<property name="skip_tasklist" value="TRUE"/>
      </action>
    </actions>
  </flurb>

I use Alltray for my terminal, and I don't want it in the window list when I have it opened. When trying to run Devilspie with this, I get this error:

** (devilspie:7587): WARNING **: Could not parse configuration: Line 27 character 65: Only <matcher> elements are allowed inside <matchers> not <property>

[Wolki]

Couple questions. When do you use the forward slash, and what's wrong with my flurb:

Forward slash at the end of a tag only if there's no tag that closes it. Usually only for <property ...... /> lines, so remove them from your <matcher .... > and <action .....> lines. I copied the debug flurb without explanation from the sample file, I'll update that section later.

gnome-terminal's window_role seems to be unique to the window, so your matcher won't work probably. It's best to create a profile in gnome-terminal for the tray and disable the dynamic window title for that profile. Then match window_title against the profile title, and window_role against "gnome-terminal".

[souled]

Ok. I've got the syntax stuff straightened out, but I have another problem. I can get the terminal to bypass the window list, but when I send it to the taskbar using AllTray, and then make it visible again, the window appears again in the window list. Why does this happen?

[Wolki]

Note: I added the part on closing tags and switched to a slightly easier way of using the debug flurb; so check these new parts if you've already read the howto.

Ok. I've got the syntax stuff straightened out, but I have another problem. I can get the terminal to bypass the window list, but when I send it to the taskbar using AllTray, and then make it visible again, the window appears again in the window list. Why does this happen?

Hm, i tried it myself and wasn't able to get alltray to put things into the tray on Breezy. :-/ So i can't really check what the problem could be,

Did you use the matcher I described in my previous post? If you want all your terminals to not appear in the window list, you can skip creating a profile and matching against window_title.

[souled]

Yeah, I disabled the dynamic title, and just made the window "Terminal." However, when you dock it with AllTray, the name in the window list becomes Terminal (AllTray). I set the window-title value to Terminal (AllTray), and it does bypass the window list when I run Devil's Pie. I just have the problem of it coming back into the window list when I open it after docking it in the taskbar.

[ubuntu_demon]

What a tasty pie this is .
I'm gonna look into this the next time I'm bored. Seems handy. Thnx for the HOWTO

[bam]

ok, its working but moves the application from where I tell it to go to the active workspace, any ideas?

[Wolki]

ok, its working but moves the application from where I tell it to go to the active workspace, any ideas?

Can you post the relevant section of your .devilspie.xml?

[bam]

after restarting gnome it seems to work now, maybe the config just needed to be reloaded?