Coordination of windows on multiple screens makes little sense

Bug #1956141 reported by udippel
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
xrandr (Ubuntu)
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I am using a laptop with internal and external monitor. At startup, naturally the windows show on the laptop. Once the second (large) monitor comes up, I want to move some (video, VLC, utc) there.

Actually, what happens is that all windows move there. I refer to
https://askubuntu.com/questions/340373/how-to-start-a-program-always-on-second-monitor
https://askubuntu.com/questions/846777/windows-move-to-external-monitor-at-connection
https://askubuntu.com/questions/296857/active-windows-moved-to-secondary-screen
https://askubuntu.com/questions/470324/how-to-move-all-windows-to-another-workspace
and
https://askubuntu.com/questions/752208/set-default-monitor?rq=1
as a workaround for the situations described further up.
Here it does not work:
xrandr -q | grep primary
eDP-1 connected primary 1920x1080+1+1080 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 256mm x 144mm
Meaning, that the opened windows move to the external monitor, be it turned on or off, as long as it is detected (power supply of second monitor connected). And done again, once switched on.

The reason is explained in one of the posts cited further up: X considers 0,0 as upper left screen edge. And, true, my second monitor is setup to be above the primary laptop screen.

I consider this not very useful for some situations, like mine. Due to age, I sit with reading glasses in front of my laptop, and want to shift specific applications like VLC to the large screen in order to watch movies, e.g.
Simply starting up however, already positions the windows already there. And with my reading glasses, I cannot see or read anything on that second screen due to the distance. So I also have to switch glasses to be able to discern the windows there, in order to drag them back to the laptop screen for reading purposes with my reading glasses window by window (so I have to change glasses yet again.)

Overall, even without my predicaments, I consider it more suitable to allocate a window to a screen / monitor instead of adapting to the current screen positioning. I'd be happy to be able to stick a window to a video output, like browser to the internal monitor, and VLC to the external monitor.
A good workaround would be if I could at least define that all newly opened windows pop up on the primary screen (laptop). Moving a window (e.g. VLC, by using a mouse) from this primary screen to the second monitor would be fully acceptable.

Personally I consider this bug as somewhere between minor and RFE. At least, to me a design decision to move applications around between monitors, including relocation to a second monitor that is switched off, seems suboptimal.

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