On Mar 24, 2006, at 6:37 AM, Uriel wrote:

Clearly rewriting X isn't an option, and living with "click to focus" is a real pain for some irritating mouse-driven applications... I'm just
surprised, because I thought the implementation in wmii-2.5 was more
than good enough.

Focus handling in wmii has always been embarrassing.

In 2.5 it is very common to have have the focus stick to the wrong
window while the mouse is in another, and then not even clicking on
that window makes keyboard focus change. (Sometimes the window with
the stuck focus is not even in the current workspace)

There are many other examples of annoying and broken focus behaviour,
I don't care what focus model is implemented, but it should be
RELIABLE!

Fair enough. I have a problem recently where sometimes clicking anywhere in a frame gives it focus, and other times I need to click on the top of the frame. I would like to be able to click anywhere in the frame for any occasion.

As for a focus model, I prefer a click-to-focus model with clicks in the frame being passed to the client. I think this is the best method as I can't accidently tap my trackpad and start typing my root password into my IRC client (I've done it and sent it). It also lets you use apps like the Gimp (ugh...) easily. This is the same model employed by OS X, although OS X apps have the luxury of knowing the window management model, and can therefore decide which things are clickable when the window does not have focus (such as the stop button in a browser) and which things aren't (such as the links on the page). What allows click-through isn't perfectly predicable, but OS X does a fairly good job (with the Finder, which badly needs to be rewritten, generally being the exception).

I'm not sure if X allows for similar things to be done. If not, I'd like the option of a focus-under-mouse mode (which, if I can ever figure out how to get X to disable my trackpad when my trackball is plugged in like I do in OS X, would be ideal). If it would be possible to switch mouse focus (so I can click buttons) but not keyboard focus (so I can't type things until I click), that would be *perfect*. Is this possible? It gives the safety of click-to-focus and the speed of focus-under-mouse, and is predictable.

FWIW, I also think it would be cute to be able to click a window title and have it expand when in stack mode. This is not critical, especially since the title bars tend to jump around which is fine for keyboard navigation but sucks for a mouse driven interface. Just an idea though.

- John

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