Xfce Forum

apurkrt

Member

From: Czechia, Europe

Registered: 2014-08-31

Posts: 48

[patch] xfwm4: resizing by right mouse dragging from the titlebar

After seeing a couple of bugreports/complaints about resizing in xfwm4 recently and discussing it before , I wrote a patch in an attempt to improve the situation.

Here is the patch. To resize a window, you press and hold right mouse button anywhere on the titlebar [except window icon and buttons] and drag the pointer (+) over the side(s) you’d like to resize. Once you hit the window edge, you “grab” it, and can then size it (it follows the mouse), releasing the pointer when the window is the desired size.

Easily doable with just one hand. You can resize any side or corner you want. No need to have thick borders for easy resize. No need to hold alt.

I find it very very practical and even intuitive (lmb drag on titlebar for move, rmb drag for resize - makes sense).

demonstration video: https://youtu.be/fCbrfSNWWs8

corresponding feature request: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12026
inspired by: http://www.x.org/archive/X11R6.8.2/doc/twm.1.html

edit: updated link to patch
edit: added demonstration video

Last edited by apurkrt (2015-09-06 20:24:51)

apurkrt

Member

From: Czechia, Europe

Registered: 2014-08-31

Posts: 48

Re: [patch] xfwm4: resizing by right mouse dragging from the titlebar

Here is a "howto" for building & installing the patched xfwm4 on arch linux, together with patch adjusted for xfwm4-4.12.3 (current)

=== Prerequisities ===

1) arch linux installed with XFCE

2) working build environment, abs, intltool. See more info on abs, basically

pacman -S abs base-devel

3) installed and enabled sudo for easy installation. What I did: pacman -S sudo, then added myself to the "wheel" group ("gpasswd -a [username] wheel", then logout and login), then enabled sudo for "wheel" group with "visudo" command.

=== Building and installing patched xfwm4 ===

1) download xfwm4 PKGBUILD and related files

export ABSROOT=$HOME/abs; mkdir -p $ABSROOT; abs extra/xfwm4; cd $ABSROOT/extra/xfwm4

Now (it's always a good idea to) check the PKGBUILD and xfwm4.install. If they seem ok:

2) download xfwm4 source ("-o"), install build dependencies ("-s")

makepkg -os

3) download the patch

curl -J -O http://bug-attachment.xfce.org/attachment.cgi?id=6450

4) apply the patch

patch -d src/xfwm4-4.12.3 -p1 < xfwm4-4.12.3-rmb_drag_titlebar_resize_gesture.patch

5) compile, install, remove build dependencies

makepkg -eir

6) Restart XFCE & enjoy

On Gentoo linux:

curl -J -O http://bug-attachment.xfce.org/attachment.cgi?id=6450
mkdir -p /etc/portage/patches/xfce-base/xfwm4 && mv xfwm4-4.12.3-rmb_drag_titlebar_resize_gesture.patch "$_"
emerge -1 xfwm4

Last edited by apurkrt (2015-09-13 20:35:15)