It looks like pyxfce meet my needs, so I decided to give it a try. The first thing to do is to build the latest svn of xfce. Next step play with the python wrapper.

Update: You don’t need the latest version (svn) of xfce. pyxfce works w/ xfce 4.2.1. The debian package is broken, as rely on a old libxfcegui (4.1)

Update 2: Debian package is fixed right now :)

Here is a little example of what you can do without too much pain. This script wait for every new window, and stack it on the same workspace as previous other windows of the same app. For example, the emacs windows is launched of the workspace ’4′, all other emacs windows will be displayed on this workspace.

import sys
import xfce4
import gtk

black_list = ['xfrun4','Terminal']

def newWinHandler(screen,win):
    name =  win.get_resource_name()
    if name not in black_list:
       for w in screen.get_windows():
           if w != win and w.get_resource_name() == name:
              dest = w.get_workspace()
              win.move_to_workspace( dest )
              break

screen = xfce4.netk.screen_get_default()
screen.connect("window-opened",newWinHandler)
gtk.main()

The major issue of pyxfce is the lack of documentation, you can do a lot of stuffs with it like creating custom xfce applications, but i didn’t find anything about this.

So now, Ion is really fine, and IBM provide a nice doc :)

For example, there is no way to place gkrellm on every workspace, or tell Kmail for stick on workspace 2. Yesterday, while surfing, i discover devilspie.

Example:

<!-- For gkrellm: place on every desktop, and hide in the tasklist -->
<flurb name="gkrellm on all Desktops">
  <matchers>
    <matcher name="DevilsPieMatcherWindowName">
      <property name="application_name" value="gkrellm"/>
    </matcher>
  </matchers>
  <actions>
    <action name="DevilsPieActionSetWorkspace">
      <property name="pinned" value="TRUE"/>
    </action>
    <action name="DevilsPieActionHide">
      <property name="skip_tasklist" value="TRUE"/>
    </action>
  </actions>
</flurb>

<!-- stick Kmail on desktop 4 -->
<flurb>
  <matchers>
    <matcher name="DevilsPieMatcherWindowName">
      <property name="application_name" value="KMail"/>
    </matcher>
  </matchers>
  <actions>
    <action name="DevilsPieActionSetWorkspace">
      <property name="workspace_index" value="4"/>
    </action>
  </actions>
</flurb>