On Tue, 2009-07-07 at 23:24 -0700, Joshua Juran wrote: > On Jul 7, 2009, at 10:27 PM, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote: > > > * Joshua Juran <[email protected]> [2009-07-08 05:30]: > >> On Jul 7, 2009, at 9:48 AM, David Cantrell wrote: > >>> Using a menu or selecting text doesn't screw around with > >>> window z-order. > >> > >> Why is this important? > > > > Maybe because if the window were to be raised it would cover some > > part of another window where I'll want to click immediately > > afterwards? Hard to image such a situation, I know. > > Maybe I don't know and so I'm asking? Hard to just answer a > sensitive question without being snarky, I know.
<serious answer - sorry for being OT> I think it comes down to how much multitasking you do. Most people use a browser and perhaps an email package and IM. Or one of those all-in-one IDE things. And auto-raise is mainly good enough for that use. Generally when they are using an app they concentrate on that to the exclusion of the others. In general I find a lot of people spend most of their time (on Windows at least) with apps full-screened, or as near as damn it. I'm unlikely to have any app much bigger than half my screen, I'm likely to have literally dozens of windows in use (the majority will be xterms), and I've carefully placed them all where I want them, right down to the order. Think of ordering a bunch of papers on your desk. You can slide one out to have a look and put it back afterwards. Oddly enough, looking at a piece of paper doesn't automatically jump it to the front of the pile. Imagine how annoying that would be, and then you'll understand my hatred of auto-raise. In general software is slow and annoying and very few things are instant on a computer. So I often have multiple things going on. I might be hacking code in emacs but need to prod an xterm, preferably without breaking concentration on the coding. Auto-raise assumes when you prod a window that's all you're interested in now to the exclusion of all else, and that's generally not true for me. If I really want to see a whole window I just click the edge (or Alt-click at worst). As to Windows the number of times I've wanted to copy & paste between windows only to find the destination window gets covered (the task bar is such a crap way of finding windows), or even worse, I want to drag files from one filer window to the other but again the destination gets covered. As to click-focus or f-f-m, click-focus is just too slow and unwieldy. I skip around my windows rapidly (I'll often be typing in one while another is executing for a few seconds before I flick back again) and I'm in control of my mouse so the focus never gets lost. Wouldn't give f-f-m to my mother since she struggles even with clicking on the track pad. There is no one solution. On your research point, there's good research that people recognise things by placement and people understand "spatial" things. That's how my windows are. I know this one is user X on machine Y because it's where I put it. Finding that from a list of 20 xterms on the task bar is massively slower. If it gets covered up because I just clicked to preview a new email that came in (that I'm probably only going to delete anyway), I lose. Hmm, seems I've been ranting for a while. I'd apologise except in this case I think it probably brings me more back on topic. Cheers, Martin
