How do I launch a new application in a new workspace from terminal?

Question

I am trying to automate launching a few programs I use every time I do a particular activity. I generally launch these and then arrange them manually into different workspace.

I was wondering how to launch a program in a new workspace from the terminal, so that I could include this in a bash shell script.

I have wmctrl installed

Answer 1

quite simple actually using wmctrl and sleep. This is what I did:

#!/bin/bash

wmctrl -s 0                ############################################
                           # Switches to first workspace [workspaces are
                           # numbered from 0]
                           ############################################

firefox -private &         ############################################
                           # launches firefox in private mode in background
                           #
libreoffice --calc &       # launches libreoffice calc (alternative to MS
                           # Office Excel)
                           ############################################

sleep 10                   ############################################
                           # Application GUIs take some time to launch.
                           # Some more than others. We want to wait before
                           # running the next command) for some time before
                           # switching workspaces, so that it doesn't 
                           # switch before all applications we want in it
                           # have had enough time to launch. 
                           # N is in seconds. Try different values until
                           # you have figured out the right value for your
                           # system and set of applications
                           #############################################

wmctrl -s 1                # Switches to second workspace
evince ~/path/to/file.pdf &
sleep 1.5                  # evince is lightweight and the pdf file I am
                           # launching isn't that large either

wmctrl -s 2                # Switches to third workspace
mindmaster &
sleep 8

# and so on....

wmctrl -s 0 # Returns back to the first workspace