XParseGeometry docs and xmenu docs causes ambiguity for positioning

[Avinash-Bhat]

According to the xmenu documentation, XParseGeometry is used for parsing the (first part of) -p option.

The XParseGeometry documentation says the format should be:

[=][<width>{xX}<height>][{+-}<xoffset>{+-}<yoffset>]

But when invoking xmenu using xmenu -p 0x0 it shows at position 0,0 (top-left) of the monitor. If I'm not wrong here, following the documentation of XParseGeometry, we should be invoking xmenu -p '+0+0' instead for the same behavior. This causes some ambiguity in positioning the menus.

On the same note, using xmenu -p '-0-0' should theoretically place it at the bottom right of the monitor which would be a good use-case to considering the user is left to do xrandr math in shell.

I'm sure that there are other users who would want to do the same.

personal note:

I ran into this weirdness when I was creating a power menu using xmenu.

#!/bin/sh
POSITION=$(xrandr --query |awk -F '[ x+]' '/\<primary\>/{print $4-(8*2)"x"$5-(95*2)}')
echo $POSITION
xmenu -p ${POSITION}:cursor <<EOF | sh &
Shutdown			systemctl poweroff
Reboot				systemctl reboot
Hibernate			loginctl lock-session $XDG_SESSION_ID && systemctl hibernate
Sleep				loginctl lock-session $XDG_SESSION_ID && systemctl suspend
Logout				i3-msg exit
Lock				loginctl lock-session $XDG_SESSION_ID
EOF

whenever I added a new item to the menu I have to adjust the y-position using awk as the height of the menu changes.

I hope you see that this is a bit awkward to work with.

[morgant]

@Avinash-Bhat Good catch! I agree with your assessment.

[phillbush]

Hi!

That was already fixed on the head of the master branch, but broken on the last tagged release.

I added on commit 4c54b1c a syntax for positioning relative to monitor or X screen.

 -p POSITION
         Set the position to spawn xmenu.  Without this option, xmenu
         spawns next to the cursor.  POSITION is a string of the form
         ±X[%]±Y[%][@MONITOR].  The X and Y arguments, and the plus or
         minus sign preceding them, are obligatory.  The percent signs,
         and the part from the at-sign to the end are optional.
         • If X (or Y) is preceded by a plus sign +, position is from the
           left (or top) edge of the screen.
         • If X (or Y) is preceded by a minus sign -, position is from the
           right (or bottom) edge.
         • If X (or Y) is followed by a percent sign ("%"), position of
           the center of the root menu is relative to the width (or
           height) of the screen.  With no percent sign, position of the
           left (or top) corner of the menu is relative to the left (or
           top) corner of the screen.
         • If MONITOR is specified and is a number, position is relative
           to the given monitor number (counting from 0), rather than
           relative to the entire X screen.  MONITOR can instead be
           "current" or "cursor", specifying the monitor where the cursor
           is on.

Quoted from the manual.