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Based on the excellent comment by @mosvy it is actually the window manager that is respecting or ignoring the propagated size hint of a window. Unfortunately though, I couldn't find a way to either not send size hint from urxvt or ignore the sent one by OpenBox.

So I guess my question really is: Is there a way at the urxvt level to stop sending size hint? Or is there a way to configure OpenBox to ignore the sent size hint for a specific application?

Original Question: 'urxvt gapless window size'

I'm using OpenBox as my window manager, and I have some hot keys configured to move windows into certain areas of the screen with a specified window size. All windows are respecting this, except urxvt which is calculating its size based on the font size of the characters it is displaying. However, if urxvt is in fullscreen mode†, it is capable of filling the screen without gaps. (I assume it is just using the configured X background and filling in the remaining space aroung the window — but I can be wrong about this.)

So my question is this: is there a builtin configuration option or maybe a perl extension that makes urxvt fill all the space the window manager is giving it to without gaps when it is not in fullscreen mode?

†Probably worth mentioning, that I'm using a perl extension already for a proper fullscreen experience.

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  • Why the -1 without any explanation? Commented Oct 4, 2018 at 9:59
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    Search for 'ignore size hints' either with rxvt or with your window manager. If you don't find anything acceptable, I'll try to make a LD_PRELOAD hack. Commented Oct 4, 2018 at 10:38
  • @mosvy thanks for the comment, I updated my question, as you can read so far no luck.. Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 9:47

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The easiest way to fix it is to modify either the source of rxvt or the source of openbox and to recompile -- look at the bottom of this answer for two very simple patches.

Another way is use an LD_PRELOAD hack that will turn off the PResizeInc flag when getting the WM_NORMAL_HINTS window property, and will prevent it from being turned on when setting that property. This will only affect the width_inc and height_inc properties -- programs that set their minimum window size or its aspect ratio will continue to work fine.

$ cat no_inc_size_hints.c #define _GNU_SOURCE #include <dlfcn.h> #include <X11/Xlib.h> #include <X11/Xutil.h> Status XGetWMNormalHints(Display *dpy, Window w, XSizeHints *hp, long *rp){ static typeof (XGetWMNormalHints) *orig; Status r; if(!orig) orig = dlsym(RTLD_NEXT, "XGetWMNormalHints"); if((r = orig(dpy, w, hp, rp))) hp->flags &= ~PResizeInc; return r; } void XSetWMNormalHints(Display *dpy, Window w, XSizeHints *hp){ static typeof (XSetWMNormalHints) *orig; if(!orig) orig = dlsym(RTLD_NEXT, "XSetWMNormalHints"); hp->flags &= ~PResizeInc; orig(dpy, w, hp); } $ cc -shared -fPIC -Wall no_inc_size_hints.c -ldl -o no_inc_size_hints.so

Then urxvt or openbox will have to be run with the 

LD_PRELOAD="$LD_PRELOAD /absolute/path/to/no_inc_size_hints.so"

variable in their environment. Example:

$ LD_PRELOAD=`pwd`/no_inc_size_hints.so openbox --replace

There are two problems with this:

1) urxvt is usually installed as a utmp setgid binary, and the LD_PRELOAD variable is cleared when exec'ing a set[gu]id binary. Look in the man page for why the utmp permission is (not) needed. So you'll have to copy the urxvt executable elsewhere (which will turn the setgid bit off). Example:

$ cp `which urxvt` .; LD_PRELOAD=`pwd`/no_inc_size_hints.so ./urxvt

2) The window manager is usually called through ssh-agent from the /etc/X11/Xsession.d scripts on many systems, and ssh-agent will also wipe the LD_PRELOAD variable from the environment. So something like this may be needed:

# cat <<'EOT' >/etc/X11/Xsession.d/98-no_inc_size_hints export LD_PRELOAD="$LD_PRELOAD /path/to/no_inc_size_hints.so" case $STARTUP in /usr/bin/ssh-agent*) STARTUP="/usr/bin/ssh-agent env LD_PRELOAD=$LD_PRELOAD ${STARTUP#* }";; esac EOT

Possible patch for openbox-3.6.1:

 --- openbox/client.c~ 2018-10-06 08:34:25.615967414 +0300 +++ openbox/client.c 2018-10-06 08:34:28.916133702 +0300 @@ -1757,9 +1757,6 @@ void client_update_normal_hints(ObClient if (size.flags & PBaseSize) SIZE_SET(self->base_size, size.base_width, size.base_height); - if (size.flags & PResizeInc && size.width_inc && size.height_inc) - SIZE_SET(self->size_inc, size.width_inc, size.height_inc); - ob_debug("Normal hints: min size (%d %d) max size (%d %d)", self->min_size.width, self->min_size.height, self->max_size.width, self->max_size.height);

and for rxvt-unicode-9.22:

 --- src/main.C~ 2018-10-06 08:33:08.580085731 +0300 +++ src/main.C 2018-10-06 08:33:37.549545455 +0300 @@ -657,7 +657,7 @@ rxvt_term::window_calc (unsigned int new unsigned int w, h; unsigned int max_width, max_height; - szHint.flags = PMinSize | PResizeInc | PBaseSize | PWinGravity; + szHint.flags = PMinSize | PBaseSize | PWinGravity; szHint.win_gravity = NorthWestGravity; /* szHint.min_aspect.x = szHint.min_aspect.y = 1; */ @@ -1073,7 +1073,7 @@ rxvt_term::resize_all_windows (unsigned { szHint.flags &= ~(PBaseSize | PResizeInc); XSetWMNormalHints (dpy, parent, &szHint); - szHint.flags |= PBaseSize | PResizeInc; + szHint.flags |= PBaseSize; } if (!ignoreparent)

Both are against the versions from debian 9.5; they'll only apply with patch -l -- I don't know how to get this damn thing to preserve tabs.

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  • You are a genius, mate, no doubt! Thanks for the explanations and possible solutions/suggestions. I think at this point it is fare to say that the best option would be to contact the developers of each of these projects, show them your answer and make them aware that this is indeed a thing that is needed and one which unfortunately has no obvious workaround therefore they should introduce configurable options about it. But this probably is not your concern anymore :) Cheers again! Commented Oct 7, 2018 at 9:40
  • Thanks a lot for your detailed answer. However I cannot make work your fix/patch on the Openbox sources. Do you know of an obvious reason why the resize hints would still be applied with your patch? An idea I could investigate? I am using Ubuntu 1804. Thanks! Commented Oct 21, 2020 at 17:00
  • @njames No idea. What terminal are you using? Also, did you build from the original sources, or from the debian package with dpkg-source -b? Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 20:29
  • @mosvy I use mate-terminal, but I tested with rxvt too and cannot make it work. I compiled the source v3.6.1 from the Openbox website. Commented Oct 25, 2020 at 15:23

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