Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!swick
From: swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: icon geometries?
Message-ID: <8906301618.AA03215@LYRE.MIT.EDU>
Date: 30 Jun 89 16:18:23 GMT
References: <8620@june.cs.washington.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: DEC/MIT Project Athena
Lines: 30

> tell me there is a
> hidden "-icongeometry" parameter encrypted into the Xtoolkit sources!
> please deliver me from the hell of having all my icons in the upper
> left corner!

Sorry, there's no such convenient argument.  I could try to justify this
on the basis that the ICCCM doesn't generally allow applications to
specify their icon size, only the position; so the general-purpose
geometry syntax is inappropriate, but I suspect you might laugh at me.

Actually, the window manager developers seem to be generally loath to
give up much control over icons and proliferating yet more command
line arguments that might or might not be respected by the wm seemed
like an unwise thing to do.  It would be inappropriate to re-use the
-geometry argument, as that specifically applies to the application's
window(s).  Granted, it's less convenient but you can always say

	myprog -xrm '*iconX:nnn' -xrm '*iconY:mmm'

or even,

	myprog -name mystyle1

	mystyle1.iconX:nnn
	mystyle1.iconY:mmm

Some applications have added a command line argument to specify x&y
as a single option (e.g. xterm).  This may have been a mistake, but
since I was the perpetrator (well, it _was_ there before X11) it
would be hypocritical for me to say so directly :-)