Set icon position in .fvwm/configure (FVWM2)?

Configuration General Questions
1

Set icon position in .fvwm/configure (FVWM2)?

(Apologies if this is a duplicate or the answer is obvious. I’ve searched the man page, forums, and source code without success.)

I like to have the same initial setup each time I start FVWM – applications, their window and icon positions, iconified status, etc.

Correctly-written X11 applications like xterm support setting all the above:

$ xterm -geometry +800+200 -xrm 'xterm*iconGeometry: +800+600' -iconic

But most “modern” (sigh) programs are missing one or more of the three options, probably because they’re designed to only work with one specific “desktop environment” instead of a window manager, and/or their creators didn’t understand the ICCM, EWMH, and Xt Intrinsics APIs or considered them too antiquated to bother with (despite the fact that their capabilities have never been improved upon). (End editorial comment.)

Such omissions can be mitigated via FVWM’s Style options of StartIconic and PositionPlacement. That’s two out of three, but is there any similar “IconPlacement”, “IconPosition”, etc. for the third?

To clarify, these are desktop icons (no IconBox), and I don’t need to control the application window’s size as at least all the programs I use either support that via commandline arguments, configuration files, etc. or it’s not applicable to them.

And in case I’m posing an XY problem, should I instead be using a FVWM’s SessionInitFunction, etc? I’ve shied away from that as it strikes me as more complexity (and opportunites for breakage) than I need, I haven’t found any documentation about whether LightDM works with FVWM for this, and because an explicit/unchanging setup via InitFunction is actually a better match for my desired workflow.

Thanks for any answers, and (as always) for FVWM.

2

If you’re asking how do you position Icons using a geometry string, have a look at the “IconBox” Style option.

3

Thank you, Thomas, for this and all your other never-ending support efforts.

User error on my part. I didn’t fully understand IconBox, thinking from the docs and usage examples that it was only for a single icon box containing multiple icons – which is the exact the opposite of what I want, and why I don’t use other window managers or desktop environments, which place iconified apps in a menubar (essentially the same thing). I keep each default application and its matching icon in a fixed location on the desktop, and when I want to use one my hand’s unconscious muscle memory automatically moves the mouse to it instead of my having to think and look to find it in an iconbox/menubar where it’s in some dynamically changing (alphabetical, order of creation, etc) arrangement.

I still think a separate “IconPlacement”/“IconPosition”/something option would be clearer, but the more general-purpose IconBox handles my use-case, so all good. I’d already written a utility to work around my misunderstanding-based problem:

Usage: ewmhctrl (-name <window name> | -pid <executable PID> | -xid <X11 ID>) \
                [-ipos <x> <y>] \
                [-wpos <x> <y>] \
                [-iconic] \
                [-- <command and args>]
Sets running (or optional new) application icon position, window position,
  and/or iconic state.
Application specified by name, PID, or XID (implicit PID if new; does not work
  for MDI applications managing multiple windows).
Command args "-t", "-n", "--title=" or "--name=" provide implicit "-name".

but “Style IconBox …” is a much cleaner solution.

Thanks again for FVWM.