Unable to force workspace for contactlist or chat-window

[Ben Scholzen 'DASPRiD']

Binary package hint: empathy

Using empathy 2.30.1 on Ubuntu Lucid, I'm experiencing the following bug (which the code refers to as 'feature'):

As I'm using multiple viewports, and empathy and another view applications are set to run at startup, I want those to spawn at certain workspaces in specific positions. This works fine for all applications except empathy. It automatically re-appears at the last position where you closed it and always on the current viewport, even tho the window manager (compiz) places it on a specific viewport on a certain position. The reason for this is the following:

When you start empathy, the window manager (compiz) positions the window on viewport 4 at 1920x0 (in my case), any probably with a fixed size. Empathy calls the function "empathy_window_present" in "libempathy-gtk/empathy-ui-utils.c" when the contactlist or the chat-window spawns, which checks if the window is on the current viewport (which it isn't). In this case, it first tries to move it to the current viewport (which fails, since it can only move between workspaces). So then it hides the window and shows it agian, which makes it appear on the current workspace. Since it was reopned now, it grabs the position from the last known one, which is the one when you closed it last time manually.

This behaviour renders fixed positioning useless. According to the code, it is a wanted behaviour, sine a user would always expect that the contactlist opens on the current viewport. I agree with that in so far, that if it was not already opened, it opens there, but if it is already open, and moved by the window manager, it should not try to re-open itself in the current viewport.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Are there any news about this bug? Has someone affected by this bug sent the report upstream? May you tell us the bug number? Thanks in advance.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks aga