Accessing tall dialogs on the short screen

DevTerm
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In my first evening with the DevTerm (which was a fun build and I’m really impressed with the overall design!) it became apparent that despite dabbling for decades with “Linux on the Desktop” I’m still confused by most of the window manager options out there for it :joy:

The small screen size is really calling my bluff on these things too…. For example, Inkscape comes pre-installed on the clockworkpi image but I can’t get past the first welcome dialog! I can only see the top half and can’t figure out how to resize or drag the window anywhere to get to the rest of the content.

I found the thread at Help with Panning and virtual screen resolution with some tips for outright changing the overall (virtual) screen resolution. Is that sort of a fun alternative to how everyone else is dealing with the situation? Or is that really what you have to do sometimes?

Basically I’m wondering what the Linux power users do in the sort of situation where a window goes “below the fold”.

Are there:

  • keyboard shortcuts or
  • mouse tricks or
  • not-necessarily-obvious-to-noobies usages of the top frame buttons

or …whatnot that you all are using to move around a “too big” window? Like something obvious to most people that goes unspoken? Or are those screen resolution/panning tricks I linked really the only go-to option? (I don’t mind using them, I just don’t want to years from now have some Linux aficionado catch me messing with that and say “oh that’s interesting but why don’t you just $X instead like a normal person?” :rofl:)

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D’oh! I linked to a thread but hadn’t actually noticed/opened the first link in it!!!

The page at How-Tos and Tweaks - Clockwork GameShell starts right out with a “Window Manipulation” section:

  • Alt + Left Drag: Move the window from any position [this sounds most useful!]
  • Alt + Right Drag: Resize the window from any position

So I should give that a try, sorry for the noise but maybe this will help others find too? And any other tips still welcome of course.

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Helped me!! Thanks for posting the follow up!

Update: Actually, when I try to use those they don’t work for me on A04

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This post led me to this solution:

xrandr --listmonitors to learn the name of your monitor. Mine is “None-1”

Output:

Monitors: 1
 0: +*None-1 1280/339x480/127+0+0  None-1

Then scale the screen with xrandr --output None-1 --scale 1.5

When you want to go back to normal use xrandr --output None-1 --scale 1

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I use the CM3 on the DevTerm and use the following command

xrandr --output DSI-1 --panning 720x1280

I can then just mouse down and see the rest of the screen.
I use this often enough that I put this in a file stuffed into /usr/local/bin so I just type “pan” to turn on the panning.

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You can add it to your bashrc as alias too

~/.bashrc

alias pan="xrandr --output DSI-1 --panning 720x1280"
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Probably worth mentioning that xrandr --output DSI-1 --panning 0x0 undoes the panning as well

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Ah! I have the solution of solutions right here! Run xfce4-keyboard-settings and click on “Application Shortcuts”. Then define your own custom keyboard hotkeys! I set the following:

  • Meta + j is set to run xrandr --output None-1 --panning 1280x1280
  • Meta + u is set to run xrandr --output None-1 --panning 0x0

Then I can toggle panning on & off with a quick keystroke!

Note that I use “None-1” here because when I run xrandr --listmonitors I see mine is called “None-1”

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