windows/dialog boxes larger than screen

[xmorg]

This has been a pain in my side since RedHat Linux 5.1.

It has continued on through my use of FreeBSD, and it has to do with the default window size of various dialog boxes and applications that use xorg/xwindows. Windows are often drawn offscreen if your monitor resolution is not large enough. If your screen is large enough you dont notice but back in the day I had a 1024x768 tube monitor and it sucked that i couldnt see the whole window when I opened it up

2(modern) examples
(Fedora) Emacs(using gtk) opens up in pekwm in full view then quickly resizes to larger than my screensize. The bottom bar is below the screen.

(trisquel) This one is a serious one imho. I finally got mi wife to use linux on her netbook yet being a netbook at 1024x600 it does not have a LARGE irix multiscreen monitor So when we tell it to print, the print box comes up larger than the screen vertically. the printer selection box is huge! it has space for like 10 printers when we have only 1, hehe. the system doesnt seem to let us maximize or resize i vertically(only horizantally) Also, you cant reach the bottom right corner becuase its offscreen.

My question: is there someway to force dialog boxes and apps to conform to the screen size instead of going beyond the screen size? some apps seem to be hardcoded to work with larger screens only.