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Bob P
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Joined: 20 Oct 2004
Posts: 3372
Location: USA
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 Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2024 3:59 pm Post subject: How to Specify Virtual Desktop for a Cron Task? |
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I'm looking for some help writing a cron task that opens a browser instance and assigns it to appear on a specific virtual desktop in X11.
My window manager is KDE. So far I've been able to deploy the task, but I have had no luck designating the virtual desktop where I 'd like it to appear.
My KDE desktop has multiple virtual desktops that I can select with Pager. I'd like to restrict the specified task to appearing only on the specified virtual desktop. Right now I've got things working to the point that deploying the task works reliably, but the window manager is assigning the task to whichever virtual desktop happens to have focus, or to have recently had focus, rather than putting it on the virtual desktop I'd like it to be assigned to.
I'm using:
KDE Plasma 5.27.11
KDE FRameworks 5.116.0
Qt 5.15.14
Here's an example of a cron entry where I can call Brave Browser to open the Gentoo Forums home page:
| Code: | 00 07 * * * export DISPLAY=:0 && /usr/bin/brave-browser-stable --window-position=0,0 --window-size=1050,2100 https://www.forums.gentoo.org 2>&1
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My problem is that I can't figure out how to designate the virtual desktop where the browser will appear.
I've tried adding display number suffixes to the display value, hoping that it would assign it to one of my virtual desktops, buy no joy. The following example doesn't work in assigning the broswer to appear on virtual desktop 4:
| Code: | | export DISPLAY=:0.3 |
Ideas? |
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sMueggli
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Joined: 03 Sep 2022
Posts: 466
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| Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2024 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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Why are you using a cronjob for this task? I think XDG autostart is a better aproach to automatically start graphical applications.
Virtual desktops looks like a desktop specific thing. I do not think that cronjob and XDG autostart are aware of this. |
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Bob P
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Joined: 20 Oct 2004
Posts: 3372
Location: USA
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| Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2024 4:42 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for responding.
My feeble undestanding of XDG Autostart is that it's used to:
a) autostart applications when the desktop is started, or
b) autostart applications when a drive is mounted
In my case, those events aren't correlated with the time that I want the application to be deployed. So I'm looking at BASH and cron.
I'm thinking there's got to be some way to communicate with the window manager to assign a virtual desktop ... I just haven't found it yet.
Thanks again. |
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szatox
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Joined: 27 Aug 2013
Posts: 3394
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| Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2024 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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Long long time ago KDE had an option in the config manager to bind an application to a workspace, is it still there?
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Ralphred
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Joined: 31 Dec 2013
Posts: 623
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| Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2024 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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There are a few ways to do this, but both have implications regarding "interrupting" what you are doing when the job runs:
- Use KDE's "special window settings/rules"
Easiest way to try this is let the task run, then right click the top left icon and use "special window settings" in the "more" menu.
The downside of this is with a browser the window title changes with once the page is loaded, so you might find it ignores "window title".
There are multiple options of when to apply the "desktop" property, but if you end up having to use "Force" and can't get the "window title" to work you'll confine all instances of Brave to the same desktop.
- Use xdotool
There are two ways to use this, the first is simple, use xdotool to read the current active desktop, if it isn't the one brave is to spawn in, change to that (xdotool again), once it's spawned, change back.
The second way would be to have xdotool find the window after it's spawned, and use set_desktop_for_window to move it where it's supposed to be.
Below is a snippet from my media thingy, it starts the browser, waits for it to connect the amazon video site, then set focus on it so I can send the keystrokes for fullscreen etc. | Code: | /usr/bin/vivaldi >>~/vivaldi.log 2>&1 &
until [ "Amazon.co.uk: Prime Video - Vivaldi" == "${window_name}" ];do
sleep .25
window_name=$(xdotool getwindowname $(xdotool search --class "Vivaldi-stable"))
done
ID=$(xdotool search --class "Vivaldi-stable")
xdotool windowfocus ${ID} |
I don't know how much you'd have to tinker if you have multiple brave window instances (probably iterate them looking for the right window title).
As a aside, when starting a thing inside KDE/Plasma from outside, I find using xdotool to have plasma/kwin start something via a keyboard shortcut works better than starting it by external script, it inherits the environment properly (I have udev start steam this way when my BT gamepad connects).
EDIT: | szatox wrote: | | Long long time ago KDE had an option in the config manager to bind an application to a workspace, is it still there? |
Yes it is, I use it extensively because of my complicated sound set-up, it also lets you confine them to specific activities too, I wote the reply abaove and had to go out before finishing, hence not starting my reply referencing your post. |
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Bob P
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Joined: 20 Oct 2004
Posts: 3372
Location: USA
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| Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2024 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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| szatox wrote: | | Long long time ago KDE had an option in the config manager to bind an application to a workspace, is it still there? |
I have to confess that I don't know. One of my problems is that KDE/Plasma is not very well documented.
Regarding the binding of an application to a specific workspace, I'm not sure that would help if it binds every instance of that application to an exclusive workspace. At any given time I might have a browser session open on one of many virtual desktops. Right now my cron task successfully opens a new browser instance, but it does so on whatever virtual desktop has focus, without regard for virtual desktop assignments or what I may be doing. This is a bit inconvenient, as the opening browser window steps on whatever I happen to be doing as the new window steals focus from whatever task I'm working on. I'd like to be able to assign a particular window to be opened on a particular virtual desktop, without stealing focus when I'm working on another virtual desktop. This would require allowing new instances of a browser to be opened on a specified desktop without stealing focus from wherever that focus might be, and it would also require the browser application to be available on any designated workspace. I'm not sure if binding an application to a workspace would interfere with that. |
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Bob P
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Joined: 20 Oct 2004
Posts: 3372
Location: USA
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| Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2024 1:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Ralphred wrote: | There are a few ways to do this, but both have implications regarding "interrupting" what you are doing when the job runs:
[list][*]Use KDE's "special window settings/rules"
Easiest way to try this is let the task run, then right click the top left icon and use "special window settings" in the "more" menu.
The downside of this is with a browser the window title changes with once the page is loaded, so you might find it ignores "window title".
There are multiple options of when to apply the "desktop" property, but if you end up having to use "Force" and can't get the "window title" to work you'll confine all instances of Brave to the same desktop. |
I mentioned in the previous post that I've encountered the focus stealing/interrupting problem when the cron job runs. that's not a big deal when cron tasks occur infrequently, but it becomes decidedly frustrating with frequently occurring cron tasks. Untimately that establishes a barrier to automation of frequent tasks.
I had previously spent a lot of time trying to get "special window settings" and "special application settings" to work within the desktop manager using the menus available by right-clicking on window header. I have not had much luck. Obviously, when we're talking about browser instances, where many of the parameters would be the same when many browser instances are open, it makes sense to configure the special window or app settings to seek an exact match against the window title. In theory that's a good solution as chrome allows you to set the window title using the "--window-name=<string>" command line parameter.
In practice, naming the window using the command line parameter works superficially, in that the window is indeed displayed with the expected string in the title; unfortunately the window manager ignores the title string as well as all of the previously saved instructions regarding window sizing, desktop location, etc., irrespective of which setting I may choose, even when "forced."
I must be doing this entirely wrong because I can't get things to work if multiple instances are open -- the only other possibility is that these menus don't really work as advertised. Given years of fighting with malfunctions of these specialized windows settings, I always thought that they just don't work. I'd be surprised to learn that other people can actually get them to work as intended.
As you suggested, I have noticed that the window title rules are not honored -- this might suggest that the timing of the population vs. inspection of the window title is critical and a necessary condition is not being met. Unfortunately I've had no luck in spite of choosing a variety of control options including 'force'. I'm king of at a loss here.
I have tinkered with xdotool in the past, though not as extensively as with the special window settings / special application settings. I'll have to look at that again.
I seem to remember seeing a post somewhere that KDE/Plasma supports a dbus interface to the desktop manger when commands are initiated externally (ie: cron tasks). Unfortunately, there seems to be zero documentation about that, even though it sounded like dbus was the preferred way to do what I'm trying to do, insofar as it should provide a direct control interface to Plasma.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.  |
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Ralphred
l33t
Joined: 31 Dec 2013
Posts: 623
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| Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2024 3:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Bob P wrote: | | I mentioned in the previous post that I've encountered the focus stealing/interrupting problem when the cron job runs |
The obvious way around this is to bind the browser you want to "auto open" to a specific desktop by window class with "force", and only use that browser for the cron task.
The first time the task runs you'll get a focus issue, but after that you can just have it open a new tab in the background - you just need to be careful about browser settings so it actually loads the tab and doesn't sit there waiting for focus before it does.
The other thing that springs to mind is xnest, but the config, set-up and overhead involved pushes the idea to the very border of "do you want this, or actually need it?". |
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