How to resize application windows in an arbitrary direction (not vertical and not horizontal)

Question

One of the most annoying things for me in using Linux, is resizing an open window, such as a terminal window.

I'd like to resize the terminal window (make it larger or smaller). But when I put the mouse at the lower right corner to grab the corner point, it is trial and error to get the mouse to become at an angle so I can resize the terminal in an arbitrary direction this way:

         \
          \
           \ |
          ___|

It insists that I resize it either like this

---->  

or like this

  |
  |
  V

Sometimes it takes 5 seconds of trial error moving of the mouse around the corner of the window and error in order for the mouse to show at an angle instead of up or sideways so that the window can be resize in direction other than vertical or horizontal only.

I am using standard terminal emulation that appears in the menu->system->terminal. I think this is has to do with the desktop type. I am using Linux mint 14, with xfce distribution.

Is there a way to disable the horizontal and vertical resizing, and just keep the angle resizing? As I can use that for both and it is much more flexible. Now I have to first resize vertically, then resize horizontally to enlarge the window which is very silly.

This actually affects all windows, not just the terminal. For example, when I open firefox, and want to resize it, same problem happens. That is why I think it is a window manager configuration issue, and not the gnome-terminal itself.

In other words, I want it to work just like on windows, where I grab the corner of any window, and I can resize at an arbitrary direction always. Surely one can do this in Linux.

Answer 1

Quick fix: hold down the Alt key, right-click into the window and drag the window to the size you want.

Answer 2

You may try to use xdotool. This tool is'nt related to xfce but to directly to X:

Fist take a window id by:

xwininfo

or

winId=$(xwininfo | sed -ne 's/^.*window id: \(0x[0-9a-f]*\) .*$/\1/ip')

than click on a terminal window, and:

xdotool windowsize --usehints $winId 100 30

or if winId store such graphic window's id:

xdotool windowsize $winId 1024 800

Answer 3

I had so much annoyance with windows I despaired, and then wrote functions to deal with it once and for all. If you put them in initialization files you may never notice them. Those below are some of them, with comments, so you'll get an idea what you can do, and how. Note though, this will require a lot of fiddling; but when done, getting rid of the mouse, everything looks the way you want, etc. -- it's worth it.

## hide all X windows
hideall () {
    DISPLAY=":0"  # (if you call this function from a tty)
    wmctrl -k on  # show desKtop: i.e., hide all windows
}

# urxvt window
# note: try `wmctrl -l` (as in "list") for windows to manipulate
alias maxu='wmctrl -r urxvt -b toggle,fullscreen' # -r: taRget window
alias hidu='wmctrl -r urxvt -b toggle,hidden'     # -b: what to do
fiftu () {
  wmctrl -r urxvt -b remove,fullscreen
  wmctrl -r urxvt -e 0,0,358,1024,381             # -e: rEsize
}

Here is a more advanced example how to store and reload a window's state, if you like to hide it while doing something else:

# store what window was displayed as a numeric value
WIN=`xprop -display ":0" -root | grep ^_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW \
                               | cut -d" " -f5`
# hide all windows
hideall

# do stuff

# restore the window, using the number you obtained above
#  -i instead of a string, identify window with a numeric value
#  -a Activate
DISPLAY=":0" wmctrl -i -a $WIN