Sane Window Placement in Unity

I've never been terribly enamoured with Unity's window placement algorithm. Granted, it works reasonably well for single monitor configurations. However, once we start using larger multi-monitor configurations, windows all too often pop up on a monitor far away from the one presently in use. That's bad enough; but when we're talking about dialog windows too, it quickly becomes intolerable.

The simple but effective algorithm of "place beneath the pointer" is a tried-and-tested golden oldie. It is often found on the older-style window managers, built for productivity and simplicity (think descendents of fvwm). It also happens to be ideal for large multi-monitor configurations, as new windows are spawned where your pointer (representing your present view point) is.

Thankfully, switching to such a placement algorithm is made simple in Compiz.

Start "ccsm" via the Unity dash, locate the "Window Management" section, click on "Place Windows", and make the following changes:

Placement Mode -> Pointer
Multi Output Mode -> Use output device with pointer
Force Placement Windows -> enter the text "(type=Dialog) | type=Normal", without the quotes.