How to start and position multiple applications on Ubuntu/Linux?

Question

At my new job I am doing rails development and I am on Ubuntu (my choice). I want to start up emacs, and 2 or 3 terminals, position them, and possibly cd to directories.

I have been looking all over but can't seem to find any application which will do this.

I am asking this here, because if there isn't an app somebody knows about, it will be a programming question, of how can I accomplish this in a KISS way (little ruby script or something).

So: Do you of any applications that will do what I want, or if that fails, do you know of a simple way to programmatically do this myself (I don't care what language/framework).

Answer 1

A lot of commands accept a -geometry argument (xterm does, for instance, so there's your terminal right there). I'm not sure how Ubuntu handles this stuff, but on Slackware I'd just put the commands I want to run in my ~/.xinitrc file. It's just a script that gets run when X comes up, so you can use it to run your window manager, and any apps you want to come up with X.

ED: Also ISTR many desktop environments like Gnome/KDE/XFCE and even CDE supporting some sort of "save session on logout" thing. You might be able to simply lay out your windows and apps the way you want them, and log out, saving the session, then just don't click that box to save your session in the future.

Answer 2

Write a shell script that launches emacs and gnome-terminal. To start up in a certain directory, there's probably a command line option; for example, in Konsole you can run "konsole --workdir ~" to get to your home directory.

Adam has a good suggestion for positioning. Another method, in KDE again, would be to edit the default settings for emacs and gnome-terminal windows to start at a specific size and position (although that might break down with multiple gnome-terminals, as they'd all be in the same position).

Edit: the option for gnome-terminal is "--working-directory".

Answer 3

I think what you need is devilspie:

http://burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie