New chat windows unconditionally spawn in top left

[Sam Pointon]

Binary package hint: pidgin

Steps: open a chat window, move it, close it, then open another chat window
Expected: the window would spawn in the same place as it was closed
Observed: it spawns in the top left corner of the screen

I updated to pidgin 2.5.2 a few days ago on Hardy and the symptom manifested itself. Before (with 2.4.1 I believe) the chat windows would correctly remember their position, and spawn in the bottom right of the screen (where I like them). Having to move every single new conversation over to the bottom right is, if the pun is excused, a drag. I am not running compiz; just plain metacity.

The pidgin devs have indeicated at http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/7172 that they consider this a window manager issue and that they intentionally caused the regression by disabling the position-remembering code, which was what caused it to previously work. I have no idea whether metacity or some other already instealled tool is capable of doing this with metacity (some preliminary googling suggests not) or if re-enabling pidgin's position-remembering code is the best option.

[Lupine (thelupine)]

Thank you for taking the time to make Ubuntu better. Since what you submitted is a Feature Request to improve Ubuntu, you are invited to post your idea in Ubuntu Brainstorm at https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ where it can be discussed, voted by the community and reviewed by developers. Thanks for taking the time to share your opinion!

[Lupine (thelupine)]

Actually, after talking over with some other members in #ubuntu-bugs channel, I feel this IS a confirmed issue and should be handled by the window manager, metacity in this case. So, I am changing the package to metacity and confirming. Sorry for the initial post, and thanks again for posting this bug.

[Thomas Thurman (marnanel)]

Metacity as it stands expects applications to remember their own window positions. We could change that policy, of course, but that's the policy as it is at present.

[Jimmy Xu (jimmyxu)]

It`s fixed by turning gconf /apps/metacity/general/disable_workarounds off.