Wmctrl: Moving a Fullscreen Window

How to make a window always on top?

the EWMH specification explicitly states that:

_NET_WM_STATE_ABOVE and _NET_WM_STATE_BELOW are mainly meant for user preferences and should not be used by applications e.g. for drawing attention to their dialogs (the Urgency hint should be used in that case, see the section called “Urgency”).

so window managers have no responsibility to respect applications which set this property directly (i.e by XChangeProperty) by themselves. this property can be changed only by sending a client message to the root window
which window managers listens on.

i don't know how to do it in high-level gui toolkits like Qt, but here is how to do it in plain X11.(see EWMH spec, or _wnck_change_state for a sample implementation).

//file: test.c
//to build it, run
//shell> gcc test.c -lX11

#include <X11/Xlib.h>   

#define _NET_WM_STATE_REMOVE        0    /* remove/unset property */
#define _NET_WM_STATE_ADD           1    /* add/set property */
#define _NET_WM_STATE_TOGGLE        2    /* toggle property  */

// change a window's _NET_WM_STATE property so that it can be kept on top.
// @display: x11 display singleton.
// @xid    : the window to set on top.
Status x11_window_set_on_top (Display* display, Window xid)
{
    XEvent event;
    event.xclient.type = ClientMessage;
    event.xclient.serial = 0;
    event.xclient.send_event = True;
    event.xclient.display = display;
    event.xclient.window  = xid;
    event.xclient.message_type = XInternAtom (display, "_NET_WM_STATE", False);
    event.xclient.format = 32;

    event.xclient.data.l[0] = _NET_WM_STATE_ADD;
    event.xclient.data.l[1] = XInternAtom (display, "_NET_WM_STATE_ABOVE", False);
    event.xclient.data.l[2] = 0; //unused.
    event.xclient.data.l[3] = 0;
    event.xclient.data.l[4] = 0;

    return XSendEvent (display, DefaultRootWindow(display), False,
                       SubstructureRedirectMask|SubstructureNotifyMask, &event);
}

// a sample main function for testing.
// shell> ./a.out window_xid
int main (int argc, char** argv)
{
    Window xid = strtol (argv[1], NULL, 0); 
    Display* display = XOpenDisplay (NULL);

    x11_window_set_on_top (display, xid);

    XFlush (display); //for simplicity, no event loops here.

    XCloseDisplay (display);
}

also note that in some x11 environment(e.g. compiz), system menus are provided by a separate decorator program instead of the compositing window manager.

how to make rxvt start as fullscreen?

1. Install wmctrl

   $ sudo apt-get install wmctrl
   

2. Create the extension directory

   $ mkdir -p ~/.urxvt/ext/
   

3. Create a plugin for Rxvt

   $ vi ~/.urxvt/ext/fullscreen
   #!perl
   sub on_user_command {
       my ($self, $cmd) = @_;
       if ($cmd eq "fullscreen:switch") {
           my $dummy = `wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -b toggle,fullscreen` ;
       }
   }
   

4. Enable the plugin

   $ vi ~/.Xdefaults
   ...
   " Fullscreen switch
   URxvt.perl-ext-common:  fullscreen
   URxvt.keysym.F11:       perl:fullscreen:switch
   

Now, you can toggle fullscreen with the F11 key.

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Reference:

• [SOLVED] rxvt-unicode not switching to fullscreen / Arch Linux Forums
• my .Xdefaults

X11. How to know the full size of a window (with the size of its decorations)

$ cat allborders.sh 
# assumptions:  
#   windows ids are at least 5 digits long
#   we dont need to bother with windows that have no name
#   "first argument" from the pipe is east (could be west)
#   

WINDOW_IDS=`xwininfo -int -root -tree   |\
    grep '[0-9]*\ (has no name)' -v     |\
    grep -Eo '[0-9]{5,}'`

for win in $WINDOW_IDS;
do 
    xprop -id $win |\
        grep -Ee '^(_NET_FRAME_EXTENTS|WM_CLASS)' |\
        sed 's/.*=\ //' |\
        sed -e :a -e '/$/N;s/\n/ /;ta' |\
        grep  ^[0-9]    |\
    while read line;
    do
        set -- $line
        E=`echo $1|sed 's/,$//'`
        W=`echo $2|sed 's/,$//'`
        N=`echo $3|sed 's/,$//'`
        S=`echo $4|sed 's/,$//'`
        NAME=`echo $5|sed 's/,$//'`
        CLASS=`echo $6|sed 's/,$//'`
        echo -e "$CLASS $NAME $N $E $S $W"
    done
done
$ ./allborders.sh 
"URxvt" "urxvt" 1 1 1 1
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"Firefox" "Navigator" 18 1 3 1
"Gmpc" "gmpc" 18 1 3 1
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "one" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "one" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"XTerm" "aterm" 0 0 0 0
"FbPager" "fbpager" 0 0 0 0

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