Can't resize smaller the Settings Manager window

Submitted by Tony Paulic @ToZ

Assigned to Xfce Bug Triage

Link to original bug (#16276)

Description

When attempting to resize the Settings Manager window, you can resize height-wise in both directions. However, when resizing width-wise, you can only make the window grow, it will not shrink. You need to either use xfconf-query to affect the /last/window-width setting (while the manager is not running) or delete the xfce4-settings-manager.xml to reset to default.

Version: 0.12.11

Theo Linkspfeifer said:

This looks like a duplicate of Bug 16028.

Frash said:

I wanted to file a new bug with this text:

When you open the settings manager you get the overview of all the setting items, like appearance, panel and desktop. If I resize the window horizontally (make it larger) or maximize it, the items in the personal, hardware, system and others group are rearranged in the groups to fit in fewer lines. Resizing the window back to a smaller state is not possible, I think because the rearrangement in the other direction doesn't work.

It is possible to resize the window when you enter a search term like 'xx', which is no fix but a workaround to get the original size back.

My setup: xfce4-settings-manager 4.14.2 (Xfce 4.14)

Theo Linkspfeifer said:

Could this exo commit be the culprit? https://git.xfce.org/xfce/exo/commit/?id=2fa107272265b2ee1da4e39ab3c59e58a9a98436

Christophe C said:

I confirm the problem in Xubuntu 20.04 focal - xfce4-settings-manager 4.14.2

It is possible to enlarge the window, but not to shrink it.

The solution is to edit the conf file ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-settings-manager.xml, and to reduce the "value" in :

<property name="window-width" type="int" value="1000"/>

Christophe C said:

same problem with archlinux.

Theo Linkspfeifer closed a related bug:

*** Bug 16028 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Theo Linkspfeifer submitted a patch:

The attached diff combines the fixes for bug 14737 and bug 13402 by making them conditional (only xfce4-settings-manager is assigning a value to item_width).

Patch 9840, "quick diff":
bug16276.diff

@lastonestanding should we merge the patch then? Was it already merged (I don't see it in master branch)?

Since the issue is a bug, it might have a slightly higher priority to merge than usual?

We are waiting for @bluesabre to review the proposed change.

Patch applied. Thanks!

Hope this will be backported, so it will arrive in Xubuntu 20.04.

mentioned in issue xfce4-settings#177 (closed)

mentioned in issue xfce4-settings#178 (closed)

closed via commit b41b6561

mentioned in issue xfce4-settings#192 (closed)

For those who happen to come across this and haven't gotten a fix, the simple GUI-based workaround which doesn't require editing text files is shown in my duplicate issue xfce4-settings#192 (closed). Here is how.

1. click on one of the setting manager entries (e.g. display)
2. resize the window width to as small as it will go
3. close the window
4. reopen settings manger

mentioned in issue xfce4-settings#214 (closed)

I confirm the problem on Ubuntu Studio 20.04/20.10 with xfce4-settings-manager 4.14.3 (Xfce 4.14).
If I maximize or enlarge the window, I cannot reduce its width.
Also if I move the window from one display to another (they are arranged one below the other), the window expands to the width of the screen, and the problem appears.
Both quick workaround solutions temporarily fix the problem:

• workaround with searchbar
• workaround with entries

mentioned in issue xfce4-settings#274 (closed)