[openbox] most aps ignore rc.xml

[plmalternate plmalternate]

Most of my aps ignore my ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml specifications for
window size and placement, despite "<position force="yes">". The only
ap I'm pretty sure is honoring them is Mirage, a picture viewer.
Thunar, firefox, gedit, k4dirstat, and galculator certainly don't.
I've gone so far as to write a script to launch thunar and then beat
it in to shape with wmctrl.  I've even thought about
recompiling some of the aps and trying to see if I can figure out how
to write the opening size and position in directly. I've never done
that and I'm not sure how much work it would be.

I'm running Ubuntu Saucy 13.10, 32 bit, made from an installation cd
made from the mini.iso, which gives you a console with bash, apt-get,
and not much more. I added x, lightdm and it's gtk greeter, openbox,
thunar, lxterminal, conky (for a clock), firefox, and this and that.
So, it's a plain openbox environment, no desktop, no panels.  After
logging in, all I see is conky showing the time. I right click for a
menu and proceed from there.

So, am I doing something wrong in the rc.xml, or maybe somewhere else?
Or have I just run into the border of the present state of the art
beyond which things don't yet work quite the way we'd like? Any suggestions?

my rc.xml is here:
http://pastebin.com/0cWbsz2P

The applications section starts
shortly after a row of commented out asterisks. So searching for
"*****" should take you right to that part.