Geeqie window appears briefly and disappears, related to absent i3 workspace

[archenemies]

ISSUE TYPE

• Bug Report

GEEQIE VERSION

$ geeqie --version
Geeqie 1.6

OS / DISTRIBUTION

Arch,

Linux 5.12.2-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri, 07 May 2021 15:36:06 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

SUMMARY

Geeqie recently tries to remember my workspaces. This created an annoying bug which was difficult to track down.

The manifestation of the bug is that when I run Geeqie it opens a window very briefly and then the window disappears.

I realized that removing my config file I could fix the problem. Then I used "emerge-files" in Emacs to track down the change that was responsible for breaking the configuration.

$ diff -u geeqierc.xml.broken-2 geeqierc.xml.working-4
--- geeqierc.xml.broken-2       2021-05-31 09:53:23.244818692 -0700
+++ geeqierc.xml.working-4      2021-05-31 09:54:27.895075537 -0700
@@ -379,7 +379,7 @@
         main_window.maximized = "false"
         main_window.hdivider_pos = "556"
         main_window.vdivider_pos = "216"
-        workspace = "0"
+        workspace = "1"

         folder_window.vdivider_pos = "100"

So I realized that this has something to do with my external monitor. Apparently Geeqie's window seems to disappear because it is trying to move itself to workspace 0, which is present but invisible.

But I don't understand why Geeqie should be messing with my workspaces in the first place. I usually want it to just appear like another program. If I wanted to assign an application to a workspace, I would use the i3 configuration file to do this.

Following #832, I just unchecked "Remember window positions".

This problem was very confusing to me and I would have appreciated more verbosity, like "Moving window to workspace 0" on STDERR.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

• use the i3 window manager?
• check "Remember window positions"
• make sure you have a workspace on an external monitor (mine is HDMI), open Geeqie and move it there
• close Geeqie
• unplug the external monitor. run Geeqie again from the command line

The Geeqie window should appear briefly and then disappear.

Now that I have disabled the window-position-remembering facility, I am unlikely to encounter this problem again, but I think new or inexperienced users could be helped with more verbosity, for example in addition to #832, we have #835, and #864 as examples of users who were confused by the new behavior.

I would have been helped by an error message as suggested above, and maybe the default should be the behavior which is simpler and better tested. In any case the bug needs to be fixed in such a way that users who encounter the "disappearing-window" phenomenon with Geeqie won't have to spend as much time as I did figuring out what is going on.

[archenemies]

I can also reproduce this when the external monitor is plugged in, but a different workspace is visible on it. In that case the Geeqie window also seems to appear briefly and then disappear.