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Here is a list of the command-line options for specifying size and position of the initial Emacs frame:
In the ‘--geometry’ option, {+-} means either a plus
sign or a minus sign. A plus
sign before xoffset means it is the distance from the left side of
the screen; a minus sign means it counts from the right side. A plus
sign before yoffset means it is the distance from the top of the
screen, and a minus sign there indicates the distance from the bottom.
The values xoffset and yoffset may themselves be positive or
negative, but that doesn't change their meaning, only their direction.
Emacs uses the same units as xterm does to interpret the geometry. The width and height are measured in characters, so a large font creates a larger frame than a small font. (If you specify a proportional font, Emacs uses its maximum bounds width as the width unit.) The xoffset and yoffset are measured in pixels.
You do not have to specify all of the fields in the geometry specification. If you omit both xoffset and yoffset, the window manager decides where to put the Emacs frame, possibly by letting you place it with the mouse. For example, ‘164x55’ specifies a window 164 columns wide, enough for two ordinary width windows side by side, and 55 lines tall.
The default width for Emacs is 80 characters and the default height is 40 lines. You can omit either the width or the height or both. If you start the geometry with an integer, Emacs interprets it as the width. If you start with an ‘x’ followed by an integer, Emacs interprets it as the height. Thus, ‘81’ specifies just the width; ‘x45’ specifies just the height.
If you start with ‘+’ or ‘-’, that introduces an offset, which means both sizes are omitted. Thus, ‘-3’ specifies the xoffset only. (If you give just one offset, it is always xoffset.) ‘+3-3’ specifies both the xoffset and the yoffset, placing the frame near the bottom left of the screen.
You can specify a default for any or all of the fields in .Xdefaults file, and then override selected fields with a ‘--geometry’ option.
Since the mode line and the echo area occupy the last 2 lines of the frame, the height of the initial text window is 2 less than the height specified in your geometry. In non-X-toolkit versions of Emacs, the menu bar also takes one line of the specified number. But in the X toolkit version, the menu bar is additional and does not count against the specified height. The tool bar, if present, is also additional.
Enabling or disabling the menu bar or tool bar alters the amount of space available for ordinary text. Therefore, if Emacs starts up with a tool bar (which is the default), and handles the geometry specification assuming there is a tool bar, and then your ~/.emacs file disables the tool bar, you will end up with a frame geometry different from what you asked for. To get the intended size with no tool bar, use an X resource to specify “no tool bar” (see Table of Resources); then Emacs will already know there's no tool bar when it processes the specified geometry.
When using one of ‘--fullscreen’, ‘--fullwidth’ or ‘--fullheight’ there may be some space around the frame anyway. That is because Emacs rounds the sizes so they are an even number of character heights and widths.
Some window managers have options that can make them ignore both program-specified and user-specified positions (sawfish is one). If these are set, Emacs fails to position the window correctly.