Linux in a Nutshell, Third Edition

Starting Windows on Different Desktops and Pages

There’s an obvious, low-tech way to start applications on different desktops and on different pages within a desktop: switch the view to the desktop and page you want (using the Pager, keyboard shortcuts, or whatever method you like), open a terminal emulator window (e.g., using the Root menu), then run any program you like. Voila. The application window opens on the current desktop and page.

But there are two automated ways to accomplish this same thing. In the first method, you specify in your .fvwm2rc file that certain programs will appear on certain desktops and/or pages automatically when you run them. You do this using fvwm2’s Style variable, which takes two relevant options: StartsOnPage and StartsOnDesk.

Here comes a confusing part. StartsOnPage takes up to three numeric arguments. If there is only one argument, it corresponds to the number of the desk on which to open the application. If there are three arguments, the second and third additionally identify the page, using an X,Y coordinate scheme. We’ll come back to this in a moment. (Two arguments alone are interpreted as the X,Y coordinates of the page.)

And what about the closely associated StartsOnDesk variable? A little more confusion here. StartsOnDesk takes only one argument: the desk number. But since you can set this with StartsOnPage, along with the more specific page address, in practice there is no need to use StartsOnDesk at all. The only real reason to use ...