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widgets-left ignores center option when panel doesn’t span the full edge #595
Description
With center enabled and full_span disabled, the widgets of widgets-left are then aligned to the left of the panel, as opposed hugging the widgets of widgets-center.
This appears to have been messed up by commit f67b883.
Erroneous, current behaviour (on master, as of the previously mentioned commit) : 
Intended behaviour (anything prior) : 
Activity
mrsteve0924 commentedon Nov 11, 2026
I'm confused. if a widget is in widgets-left it will align to the left which is what your first image shows.
having full_span=false always behaved weirdly for me especially with panels on dual monitors. like it doesnt refresh or reconfigure layout properly. i use full_span=true mostly though.
[-]widgets-left is aligned to the left when panel doesn’t span the full edge (as opposed to being aligned right)[/-][+]widgets-left ignores center option when panel doesn’t span the full edge[/+]AKArien commentedon Nov 11, 2026
My bad, i forgot to mention the
centeroption and have now edited it.Looking at the commit, it appears to be because it messes with the expand properties. I’m quite unsure that special-case-ing for the window-list widget is the solution. I see you’ve been the author of most changes relating to it, what exactly was the purpose of the special-case expansion ? things seem to work just fine by my understanding without it ? with this patch applied, i get this :
Horizontal,
center = true,full_span = falseHorizontal,
center = false,full_span = falseHorizontal,
center = false,full_span = trueHorizontal,
center = true,full_span = trueWhere the only thing that looks wrong/unexpected is due to the button of window-list taking more space than in text, which is addressed in #591 to my understanding, and in any case unrelated to the issue at hand.
mrsteve0924 commentedon Nov 11, 2026
for me, after making any change to wf-shell,ini, the window-list buttons i had in widgets_left would overlap the widgets in widgets_right instead of dynamically resizing to make room. f67b883 was an attempt to fix that but i see it also removes the extra widgets_ spacing when using the center option.
mrsteve0924 commentedon Nov 11, 2026
@AKArien your pacth works for me.
EDIT: well now i get these dots for window-list if it's in widget_center. doesnt happen if it's in widgets_left or _right
AKArien commentedon Nov 11, 2026
@mrsteve0924
that’s odd, i’m not seeing it. Are you on master + my patch ? Can you please share your whole panel configuration, or a minimal one for reproducing the issue ? Might be a matter of CSS ?ah, never mind, it occurs if it’s the only widget in a
widgets_something. Same occurs if you usewidgets_left = window-listmrsteve0924 commentedon Nov 11, 2026
ah the only widget in a widgets_. man, just a lot of variables to consider when working with the panel
mrsteve0924 commentedon Nov 11, 2026
im wondering if it's necessary to even have widgets_{left,center,right}. ive only really used xfce and its panel, and you just put widgets where you want. maybe some separators to get spacing where you want. just a thought.
AKArien commentedon Nov 11, 2026
Well, they serve for alignment. I do share the feeling, maybe we could have something based on a concept of « anchors », but that would be a big change.
mrsteve0924 commentedon Nov 12, 2026
maybe just revert f67b883 if it brings back the correct behavior. i can just go back to restarting the panel to reset window-list if needed.