gnome key binding one third window size

Question

I'd like to create key-bindings that set the current window size to one third the screen size horizontally and maximal vertically and locate it on the left, middle, or right one third of the screen. How could I accomplish that?

Answer 1

xbindkeys and xdotool

With xbindkeys you can use shortctus independently from the window manager. xdotool allows to move and resize windows.

Install it by:

sudo apt-get install xbindkeys 
sudo apt-get install xdotool 

Default Configuration

The default setting are showing what the shortcut bindings might look like. Create it and take a look at the file contents.

xbindkeys --defaults > ~/.xbindkeysrc

Use a editor to edit ~/.xbindkeysrc and enter:

"/bin/bash ~/placewindow.sh left"
    control + l

"/bin/bash ~/placewindow.sh middle"
    control + m

"/bin/bash ~/placewindow.sh right"
    control + r

Create shell script

Create a shell script with a text editor, for our use case I have named it ~/placewindow.sh:

#!/bin/bash

width=`xdpyinfo | grep dimensions | sed -r 's/^[^0-9]*(([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)).*$/\2/'`
height=`xdpyinfo | grep dimensions | sed -r 's/^[^0-9]*(([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)).*$/\3/'`

case "$1" in
    left)       
       xdotool windowsize `xdotool getactivewindow` `expr $width / 3` $height
       xdotool windowmove `xdotool getactivewindow` 0 0
       ;;
    middle)
       xdotool windowsize `xdotool getactivewindow` `expr $width / 3` $height
       xdotool windowmove `xdotool getactivewindow` `expr $width / 3` 0
       ;;
    right)
       xdotool windowsize `xdotool getactivewindow` `expr $width / 3` $height
       xdotool windowmove `xdotool getactivewindow` `expr $width \* 2 / 3` 0
       ;;
esac

Make it executable:

chmod +x placewindow.sh

Hints

After making changes to ~/.xbindkeysrc you need to

killall xbindkeys
xbindkeys 

to make the changes active immediately.

Demo

When pressing now CTRL+l, CTRL+m, or CTRL+r the active window gets sized and located. It looks like this: