Bring an open window to the current desktop in Linux

Question

Let's say I have a program open on another virtual desktop. Is there a way I can bring that program to the current desktop through a script?

The following command is the closest I can get:

wmctrl -a program

This will switch to the desktop where the program is open and make it the foremost window. However, instead of going to the desktop where the program is, I want to bring the program to the current desktop. There is also this command:

wmctrl -R program

The documentation says that this will do what I want, but it just does the same thing as the former command.

Answer 1

Turns out the -R switch works fine when using Metacity (the default window manager for GNOME) but not so much when using Compiz (the default window manager nowadays for Ubuntu I believe). You can check this out yourself by switching to Metacity using metacity --replace (use compiz --replace to switch back to Compiz).

Irritatingly enough I haven't been able to figure out why this doesn't work with Compiz, I still thought it would be nice to share what I've found out so far, which is:

• For me wmctrl -d lists a desktop geometry (DG) of 7680x1200 (I have a resolution of 1920x1200 and use 4 workspaces).

  In this case one could move the window to the second workspace by using wmctrl -e 0,1920,-1,-1,-1 (gravity, pixels from left, pixels from top, window width, window height -- the value -1 is used to indicate that the current value should not be modified).

  You can among other things use wnckprop or xwininfo to get the geometry values for the current window.

• With the Put plugin activated one can use the following command to move the current active/focused window to the second workspace (viewport?):

  dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.freedesktop.compiz /org/freedesktop/compiz/put/allscreens/put_viewport_2_key org.freedesktop.compiz.activate

That's pretty much it, hopefully somebody else can offer more insight into the matter.

Related

• Stack Overflow: How to programmatically switch to a specific window in compiz?

Resources

• Launchpad: Bug #533704 in wmctrl (Ubuntu): “wmctrl:Setting virtual workspace/desktop/viewport.”
• Compiz Community Forums: place-windows.sh (Window Placing Script)
• Compiz Wiki: Plugins/Dbus
• Compiz Community Forums: A script for activating compiz actions over D-Bus