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FVWMREARRANGE(1) FVWMREARRANGE(1) NAME FvwmRearrange - rearrange fvwm windows SYNOPSIS FvwmRearrange [options] [bounding box] [options] FvwmRearrange is spawned by fvwm, so no command line invocation will work. DESCRIPTION This module can be called to tile or cascade windows. When tiling the module will tile the windows into a grid (table or matrix) inside the bounding box (the current monitor's working area by default). Tiling is performed so that windows will not overlap. When moving and resizing windows to fit into the grid, windows are resized to their nearest increment size, specified by the window's size hints (this is why sometimes space might appear between tiled windows, common with terminals). Use the ResizeHintOverride style on widows with increment size hints to override this behavior (which removes the gaps). When cascading the module will cascade the windows inside the bounding box from the top left of the bounding box. Windows will be resized to fit the bounding box and layering is performed so that consecutive windows all have their titles visible underneath the previous window. The behavior of both tiling and cascading can be configured by the options listed below. This can control the size of the bounding box, if windows are resized, and which windows are affected, and so on. INVOCATION FvwmRearrange is best invoked from a menu, keybinding, or button. There are a number of command line options which can be used to control how windows will be cascaded/tiled, described below. Invoking FvwmRearrange with no options will auto tile (see _-auto_tile) windows on the current monitor: FvwmRearrange This tiles all windows in the working area of the current monitor into a grid. This size of the grid will be computed using the number of windows trying to make the grid as square as possible. Windows on the top row will be resized to take up any extra space filling the full working area. Adding additional arguments can change the behavior, for example: FvwmRearrange -tile -swap 10 10 90 90 This invocation will tile windows in a single column with a bounding box which starts at 10 by 10 percent into and down the monitor's working area and ends at 90 by 90 percent into and down the working area. Another example: FvwmRearrange -cascade 10 2 80 70 This invocation will cascade windows starting 10 by 2 percent into and down the monitor's working area. Windows will be resized so their height and width are 75 percent of the bounding box, which ends at 80 by 70 percent of the working area. FvwmRearrange can also be run multiple times on the same monitor with different bounding boxes. This way you can better control how windows are tiled. Consider the following example: FvwmRearrange -tile -swap 0 0 35 100 FvwmRearrange 35 0 100 100 The first command will create a single column of windows located on the left 35% of the monitor, and the second will auto tile the windows on the right 65% of the monitor. This way you can control how windows are tiled in different parts of the monitor independent of each other. If you want to run FvwmRearrange automatically when new windows are added, use FvwmEvent to trigger FvwmRearrange with an add_window event. If using multiple bounding boxes (like the above example), a ManualPlacement Style would allow you to place a window in the portion of the screen you wanted it to be tiled in. OPTIONS FvwmRearrange is only configured using command line options. These options can come before or after the bounding box, and all start with a '-'. Below the options are split into categories, TILING OPTIONS, CASCADING OPTIONS, GENERAL OPTIONS, RESIZING OPTIONS, FILTERING OPTIONS, and ORDERING OPTIONS. TILING OPTIONS Tiling takes the windows inside the bounding box, creates a grid of equal sized cells based on the number of windows, then resizes and moves the windows to fill the cells, starting at the top left. The cells are then filled one row at a time (from left to right) working downward. Windows may have minimum size or size increment EMWH hints, so there could be gaps between windows or some windows minimum size might be bigger than the cell. The ResizeHintOverride fvwm Style will override this behavior and make windows fit in their cells better. -auto_tile This is the default behavior which tiles all windows into as close to a square grid as possible. There can be up to one more column than row (or one more row than column with -swap), depending on number of windows. If the option -max_n N is also provided, then the grid will have N more columns than rows (or N more rows than columns if -swap is included). This option implies -fill_start so all space will be used. If -fill_end option is provided, the free space is used at the end instead. -tile This will tile the windows into a single row (or column if with -swap). If -max_n N is also provided, there will be at most N columns per row (or N rows per column with -sawp) in the resulting grid. If the grid has more cells than the number of windows, then the additional cells at the end will be left open, unless the -fill_start or -fill_end options are included. -max_n N This option alters how the grid is computed. When using -auto_tile this gives the number of more columns than rows (or more rows than columns with -swap). When using -tile this gives the max number of columns, before a new row is created (or max number of rows with -swap). Default is 0. -swap Swaps the rows and columns, and swaps the direction the cells are filled, by starting at the top left cell and filling each column downward (from top to bottom) while working to the right. This use to be called horizontal sort (with the default being vertical sort), and the old option -h is an alias for -swap, due to this history. -fill_start This will use any unused space in the grid by filling the first row (or first column with -swap) left open in the grid. This is done by growing the windows in the row (or column) to fill the unused space. The rest of the windows will then fill up the rest of the grid. -fill_end This will use any unused space in the grid by filling the last row (or last column with -swap) left open in the grid. -gap_x N, -gap_y N, -gap N This will set the gap between the cells the windows are placed in. -gap_x sets the size of the horizontal gap, -gap_y sets the size of the vertical gap, and -gap sets both the size of the horizontal and vertical gap to be the same. The value N is the number of pixels between cells, or the width of the line between cells. Default: 0. CASCADING OPTIONS Cascading takes all windows in the bounding box, places the first window in the upper left corer of the bounding box, then stacks the second window just below the first shifted slightly down and to the right, so the previous window can be seen behind it. This process is repeated placing each window slightly down and to the right of the previous window. By default the windows are resized such that their height and width are 75% of the bounding box's height and width. Though as the windows are cascaded, windows will shrunk so they will stay inside the bounding box. The -nostretch and -noresize options will prevent windows from being stretched or resized. -cascade Cascade windows inside the bounding box. -cascadew arg Specifies the width of the cascade windows. arg is a percentage of the bounding box's width, or a pixel value if a p is suffixed. Windows are shrunk if the width pushes them outside the bounding box. Default is 75. -cascadeh arg Specifies the height of the cascade windows. arg is a percentage of the bounding box's height, or a pixel value if a p is suffixed. Windows are shrunk if the height pushes them outside the bounding box. Default is 75. -inc_equal Make the x and y increment equal to the maximum of the two values. This is useful to get the offset to be equal to the size of the border and title bar in both directions. This can be combined with -incx, _-incy, -flatx, and -flaty. -incx arg Specifies an additional horizontal increment which is successively added to cascaded windows. arg is a percentage of bounding box's width, or a pixel value if a p is suffixed. Default is zero. -incy arg Specifies an additional vertical increment which is successively added to cascaded windows. arg is a percentage of bounding box's height, or a pixel value if a p is suffixed. Default is zero. -flatx Inhibits incrementing the horizontal position by a windows border width (and title width if titles are on the right or left). Useful with -incx to better control the horizontal increment. -flaty Inhibits incrementing the vertical position by a windows border width (and title width if titles are on the top or bottom). Useful with -incy to better control the vertical increment. GENERAL OPTIONS -screen name By default the current monitor is used to determine what windows to cascade/tile, and is used as the base bounding box. This will use the monitor specified by the RandR name instead. If name is equal to "g" the global monitor (bounding box containing all monitors is used). Since this may cause windows to span across multiple monitors, the working area is ignored (see ewmhiwa). -noraise Inhibits window raising, leaving the depth ordering intact. -maximize When moving/resizing a window, put them into a maximized state. This makes so Maximize can be used to restore the previous size and position. -animate When only moving windows (-noresize is used), use AnimateMove instead of Move to move windows. -ewmhiwa When rearranging windows, make the calculation ignore the working area, such as EwmhBaseStruts; by default, FvwmRearrange will honour the working area. This option may place windows outside of the current monitor. -win_cmd COMMAND Runs the fvwm COMMAND in the context of every window that is rearranged. This can be used to set the state of all affected windows with the COMMAND "State n" so they can be matched using the "State n" conditional. The COMMAND is sent after the window is moved/resized, so any change in window's size, adding removing title bars, etc, will not be used in computing the new position/size of the window. RESIZING OPTIONS By default both tiling and cascading will resize windows based on the provided options. These options will limit this behavior. -noresize Inhibits window resizing, leaving window sizes intact. -nostretch Inhibits windows from growing to fit the grid cell (when tiling) or bounding box (when cascading). Windows are still shrunk to fit but not expanded. This implies both -nostretchx and -nostretchy. -nostretchx Inhibits windows from growing horizontally to fit, but they will still be shrunk. -nostretchy Inhibits windows from growing vertically to fit, but they will still be shrunk. FILTERING OPTIONS These options affect which windows inside the bounding box will be tiled or cascaded. -all Cause skipped, sticky, and transient windows to also be cascaded/tiled (ignored by default). This is a shortcut for -skiplist, -sticky and -transient. -some Don't include maximized windows and windows without title bars (useful when cascading) when cascading/tiling. This is a shortcut for -no_maximized and -no_titled. -skiplist Causes windows on the windows skip list (see WindowListSkip style) to also be affected. -sticky Causes sticky windows to also be affected. This is a shortcut for -sticky_page and -sticky_desk. -sticky_page Causes windows sticky across pages to also be affected. -sticky_desk Causes windows sticky across desks to also be affected. -transient Causes transient windows to also be affected. -no_maximized Don't include windows in the maximized state to be cascaded/tiled. -no_titled Don't include windows with title bars to be cascaded/tiled. -desk Causes all windows on the desk to be cascaded/tiled instead of only windows that intersect the bounding box. -on_screen Causes all windows on the monitor to be cascaded/tiled instead of only windows that intersect the bounding box. Has no effect when used together with -desk. ORDERING OPTIONS Windows are tiled or cascaded based on their order. By default the order is based off fvwm's WindowList order (usually based off the order the windows were last focused). These options control the window order. -order_name Order the windows by their name. -order_icon Order the windows by their icon name. -order_class Order the windows by their class. -order_resource Order the windows by their resource. -order_xy Order the windows based on their (x, y) coordinate position. This is a lexicographic ordering, by comparing x-coordinates first, then if the x-coordinates are equal compare the y-coordinates. This ordering matches the ordering of the -swap tiling option. -order_yx Order the windows based on their (x, y) coordinate position. This is a lexicographic ordering, by comparing y-coordinates first, then if the y-coordinates are equal compare the x-coordinates. This ordering matches the default positing of tiling windows. -order_hw Order the windows based on their height, and if their heights are the same compare windows based on their width. This can be useful with -cascade and -noresize to stack windows based on their size. -order_wh Order the windows based on their width, and if their widths are the same compare windows based on their height. This can be useful with -cascade and -noresize to stack windows based on their size. -reverse Reverses the window ordering. BOUNDING BOX The bounding box is the area in which FvwmRearrange will both find and place windows when cascading/tiling. The base bounding box is the working area of the current or specified monitor via the -screen name option. If the option -ewmhiwa is provided the base bounding box will ignore the working area and use the full monitor. Up to four numbers can be placed on the command line to specify a bounding box relative to the base bounding box of the given monitor. The numbers give the position of the corners of the bounding box in the following order (default is "0 0 100 100"): Left Top Right Bottom These numbers are treated as a percentage of the base bounding box. For instance the bounding box "10 5 85 80" would use a bounding starting 10% across the working area from the left and ending 85% across the working area, while starting 5% down the working area from the top and ending 80% down the working area. If any number is suffixed with the letter p, then it is taken to be a pixel value instead of a percentage. Specifying zero for any parameter is equivalent to not specifying it (for example "0 0 0 0" is the same as "0 0 100 100"). BUGS It is probably not a good idea to delete windows while windows are being rearranged. AUTHORS Andrew Veliath (original FvwmTile and FvwmCascade modules), Dominik Vogt (merged FvwmTile and FvwmCascade to FvwmRearrange), Jaimos Skriletz (updated for fvwm3 including adding the auto_tile option). 2025-11-08 FVWMREARRANGE(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | INVOCATION | OPTIONS | BOUNDING BOX | BUGS | AUTHORS
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