g'day all, i'm a long-time fvwm user (15 years so far), mostly because it's lightning-quick to start up, doesn't get in my way and gives me the ability to run 24 (6x4) virtual screens. hurrah.
i've started using ORCAD 16.3 under Wine (yes, amazingly it actually works) and here's where the problems start: mouse focus when dialog boxes are created. i've raised a bugreport on winehq and it was instantly closed with the accusation "it's fvwm's fault!". well... we'll leave that judgement aside - i've encountered issues where mfc42 c++ code was written incorrectly that quotes worked quotes on w95 but the exact same program wouldn't work on nt 3.51 so the symptoms are: first dialog popup window has correct focus: the bar at the top of the dialog box goes its lovely reddish colour. type some data in, press ok, all is well. click another action (usually but not always) right-mouse to edit properties, second (or sometimes third or fourth) dialog box comes up: no focus. move the mouse into the dialog box: no focus. move the mouse around in the main window: no focus. move the mouse onto the bar at the top of the main window: this is where it gets strange. sometimes the dialog box will get focus, sometimes the main window will get focus. move the mouse outside of the main window and then back again: again this doesn't work as expected - sometimes the dialog box will get focus, sometimes the main window will. the only way that i found which will *reliably* get focus into the dialog box is to follow this procedure: 1) have an xterm hiding behind the main window whose drag bar is just visible behind the main window 2) get the popup dialog created (by whatever action) 3) move the mouse onto the *xterm* top drag bar 4) move the mouse *slowly* down to ensure that the mouse is not moved so fast such that it does not hit the main window's top drag bar (i.e. move the mouse slowly enough to ensure that it hits the main window's top drag bar) at this point - after the mouse has been moved out into the xterm and into the main window's top drag bar - the focus is correctly set to be in the dialog box. clearly, this is a complete pain. editing a schematic where an operation should take 5 to 10 seconds maximum actually takes double to triple that time (especially on a 1920x1200 screen, the mouse having to be moved a considerable way with quite a lot of accuracy), this procedure clearly and dramatically slowing down the speed at which work can be carried out. obviously, i'm not going to change the fvwm2 "focus" system which requires clicking on the top bar in order to set mouse focus: that would be a) too easy b) require working practices operational changes regarding the use of every *other* program which would clearly be massively inconvenient (i.e. i quite like mouse-move focus and am happy with it). this isn't restricted to ORCAD: it's other programs as well. it's just that the use of ORCAD requires a significant number of popup dialog boxes, so the bug in the interaction between wine and fvwm2 obviously shows up more frequently. obviously the wine team claim that because this bug doesn't occur on any other window manager that obviously it's not their problem, it can't possibly be a bug in their code, therefore they're not going to investigate. we'll deal with that flawed line of reasoning later. thoughts as to how to proceed? l.
