GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 396417
open application on current desktop/workspace
Last modified: 2007-01-17 20:09:15 UTC
Situation: I start an application on desktop "0", then (while the application is starting), I switch to desktop "1" to do some work in parallel there. When the application is started, it is running on the desktop, I am currently working with, not the one, I called it from. It's a small inconvenience when multitasking. Other information:
Does it happen for all applications?
No, it does not happen for all applications. Applications launched with startup-notification (with a specified workspace in the message) will not do this. Rather unfortunately, the default is to *not* launch applications with startup-notification. So this is a bug in the application (not supporting startup-notification preventing anyone from launching with it), the .desktop files used to specify how to launch it, and/or the launcher. Which application, what is in its .desktop file, and how are you launching it?
I realized it with Openoffice.org 2.0.4 and Firefox 2.0.0.1. I am running Ubuntu 6.10. I am launching them via menu or (in the case of OOo) by double-clicking on a link to a file on my desktop. Concerning the .desktop file, sorry I am absolutely new to Linux. Where can I find them. PS: Just checked with Gnome Sudoku and Gimp. The Window that the application is being started is shown in the 2nd desktop, but the application runs on the desktop, I started it from (as desired). So the issue is probably a matter of not-really-being-Gnome for OOo and Fx. I should have checked that before generating the issue, sorry.
It's not a problem of not-really-being-Gnome but of not-supporting-the-relevant-freedesktop-specifications (namely startup-notification). Without that support, this breaks on both KDE and GNOME. With the proper support, it should work on both (as well as when using other spec-compliant window managers besides kwin and metacity). I can't remember if the location has changed, but on my machine (running RHEL4 which is a bit old), .desktop files are found in /usr/share/applications. If you can find the relevant one for your applications (they tend to have obvious names, e.g. mozilla-firefox.desktop) then just look and see if the file contains the line 'StartupNotify=true'. If they don't, they're not being launched with startup notification. Note that firefox still doesn't have support for startup-notification (patch exists but they're having trouble finding someone to do a super review; see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=223492), and I don't know if Openoffice supports it yet or not.
Finally I found it, it is still at the place you mentioned above (just struggeled with seeing them). Firefox has "StartupNotify=true", Openoffice "false". I tried again Fx and found this behaviour: If on that workspace Fx is already running, the new window is added there, if not, it is shown on the workspace, where Fx is already running. That's surely a "particularity" of Fx. From my side it's all clear, I learnt a lot, but it's not an issue of gnome. Please close the issue.
(In reply to comment #5) > Please close the issue. Ok, will do. Thanks for following up. Probably ought to find one of the other duplicate reports and mark this as a duplicate of one of those, but I'm too lazy to do so right now. :)