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Matthias Benkmann | 6 Dec 2001 10:14
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focus follows mouse showstopper

I just installed X on my new Linux From Scratch system 2 days ago and now 
I'm looking for a window manager. I went through the list of WMs 
registered at freshmeat and compiled a list of the most promising 
candidates. Ion is at the very top of that list so I installed it 
yesterday. 
Unfortunately Ion only supports the focus follows mouse policy which is a 
complete showstopper for me. Most of the time I move my mouse either to 
scroll my virtual desktop or to get it out of the way and I don't want my 
current window to lose the focus. I hate it and just can't live with it. I 
checked out the Ion ML archives and found the ion-20011109-focus.patch, 
but this patch requires that I click the title bar to make a window 
active. That would mean that in Gimp I'd have to click the title bar 
whenever I wanted to select a different brush or tool from the respective 
window, which sucks big time.
The focussing policy I want is:

- moving the mouse never changes focus

- clicking title bar changes focus

- clicking into a window gives this window the focus AND passes on the 
click

Does anyone have a patch for this ?
I'm not the kind of person who uses several window managers. I'd rather 
use a window manager I can live with 100% of the time than one that I love 
90% and hate 10% of the time. So if I can't get this feature from Ion, I'd 
have to choose a different window manager. Does anyone know if treewm 
supports the above focussing policy, or do I have to get a more mainstream 
wm?
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Simon Hosie | 10 Dec 2001 10:20
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GTK apps and requirements for colour configuration.

Does GTK require support from the window manager to use anything but the
default colour scheme?  There don't appear to be any files left lying about
by KDE that do the job, and I've lifted the resources that KDE sets and
that doesn't do it.  Would ion be required to perform some action here, or
what?
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Rob Petri | 13 Dec 2001 11:29

Re: focus follows mouse showstopper

> Unfortunately Ion only supports the focus follows mouse policy which is a
> complete showstopper for me. Most of the time I move my mouse either to
> scroll my virtual desktop or to get it out of the way and I don't want my
> current window to lose the focus.

Ion is more of a lifestyle choice than a window manager.  You should try to
learn the keyboard commands.   You mentioned moving your mouse out of the
way...  As a developer I do the same thing and VERY rarley use my for any
window manager stuff.  I believe that ION is most powerful when used from
the keyboard.

I can't remember the name off hand but there is even a utility that will
automatically hide the mouse pointer after a few seconds of inactivity.
Very nice to keep that pesky rodent in its place. :)

Rob
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René | 13 Dec 2001 11:38
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Re: focus follows mouse showstopper

"Rob Petri" <rob <at> printf.org> writes:

> > Unfortunately Ion only supports the focus follows mouse policy which is a
> > complete showstopper for me. Most of the time I move my mouse either to
> > scroll my virtual desktop or to get it out of the way and I don't want my
> > current window to lose the focus.
> 
> Ion is more of a lifestyle choice than a window manager.  You should try to

FWIW I think it manages windows better then anything I've tried.

> learn the keyboard commands.   You mentioned moving your mouse out of the
> way...  As a developer I do the same thing and VERY rarley use my for any
> window manager stuff.  I believe that ION is most powerful when used from
> the keyboard.
> 
> I can't remember the name off hand but there is even a utility that will
> automatically hide the mouse pointer after a few seconds of inactivity.
> Very nice to keep that pesky rodent in its place. :)

unclutter

    http://www.students.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/resources.html

-- René
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Jesse W. Hathaway | 16 Dec 2001 12:07
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Problems going fullscreen and focus issues

First,
	Thanks Tuomo for the wonderful window manager, it is a joy to
	work with.

Unfortunately though a few apps are not behaving well:

1. I am unable to go fullscreen in either:
   xine http://xine.sourceforge.net
   ogle http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/

   when I try to go fullscreen in ogle in outputs the frank message:

   Debug[ogle_vout]: resize: 853, 480
   !Debug[ogle_vout]: window is not at 0,0 trying to fix that
   Debug[ogle_vout]: f**king non-compliant wm, we can't trust it on
   x-coords
   Debug[ogle_vout]: wm_x: -3, xtranslate_x: 1
   Debug[ogle_vout]: f**king non-compliant wm, we can't trust it on
   y-coords
   Debug[ogle_vout]: wm_y: 16, xtranslate_y: 20
   Debug[ogle_vout]: Couldn't place window at 0,0
   Debug[ogle_vout]: resize: 1280, 720

   The window simply stays at its original size, this happens with or 
   without the XF86VidMode extention. Are there perhaps some choice 
   entries I could place in kludges.conf to remedy the problem, or is 
   this a bug in ion?  If it is a bug, how difficult would it be to 
   correct?

2. If you open realplayer and then close it, ctrl-x, ion/realplayer
(Continue reading)

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Alan Jaffray | 17 Dec 2001 03:55
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alternate keybindings

Hello,

I find that Ion's keybindings can be much improved if you give Ion its own
meta key.  Most keyboards have at least one unused modifier key which can
be put to the task, and doing so completely eliminates the chance of
conflict between Ion bindings and application bindings, and the need to
bind to multi-key sequences or awkward keystrokes like function keys to
avoid such conflicts.

On most keyboards I'd use one of the "Windows" keys, but my ThinkPad, in
a show of good taste rare among PC makers, doesn't have them.  But I don't
use my right-Alt key, so I remapped that:

    ! Remap right Alt key for Ion
    remove Mod1 = Alt_R
    keysym Alt_R = Super_R
    add Mod3 = Super_R

I then shuffled bindings around until I found something I was happy with.
It's by no means optimal, but I think it's much more comfortable than
the defaults, if you've got a key to spare, or if you use meta-key-heavy
applications like emacs.

Here's my bindings.conf.  Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Alan

#
# Alternate bindings.conf for keyboards which have a Mod3/Super key.
# (Or, more common, keyboards which can be remapped to have such a key.)
(Continue reading)

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chad | 17 Dec 2001 15:57
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Re: alternate keybindings


As a minor addition, I suggest that most people have a very familiar,
easily-reachable key that can be used for this, labeled `Caps Lock':

  ! assign the key to Mod5 -- windowmanager key
  remove Lock      = Caps_Lock
  add Mod5         = Caps_Lock
  keysym Caps_Lock = Hyper_L

I have been using this technique happily for almost ten years, with a
variety of windowmanagers.  I have yet to find a `normal' application
that uses the `high modifiers', so these are safe, and allow you to use
the more common modifiers in permutations as well (i.e. mod5+control,
mod5+shift, etc).  

One thing that requires caution is finding one of the `evillock' keysyms
on one of the high modifiers -- most setups seem to have Scroll_Lock on
Mod5, which interacts poorly with ion's evil lock modifier avoidance
code.  I started to patch ion, then decided simply to remove the
modifier binding from Scroll_Lock:

  ! unconfuse ion
  remove Mod5 = Scroll_Lock

chad
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Tuomo Valkonen | 17 Dec 2001 20:18
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Re: Problems going fullscreen and focus issues

On Sun, Dec 16, 2001 at 05:07:09AM -0600, Jesse W. Hathaway wrote:
>    !Debug[ogle_vout]: window is not at 0,0 trying to fix that
>    Debug[ogle_vout]: f**king non-compliant wm, we can't trust it on

fscking non-compliant program: ICCCM requires programs to accept whatever
position and size the window manager gives them.

Most programs have fullscreen implemented as kludge that resizes and moves
the window so that it takes the whole screen (possibly also setting some
MWM hints) but doesn't in anyway override the window manager. The only
program that I have come across that has a fullscreen mode that works
in Ion and that is a "real" fullscreen in the sense that it completely
overrides the window manager is gqview.

There isn't much Ion could do with the crappy kludged fullscreen at the
moment, but I have planned to add a support for fullscreen windows as
workspaces and Ion could then detect this kludge condition. (But as can
be seen, there hasn't been much progress lately.)

> 2. If you open realplayer and then close it, ctrl-x, ion/realplayer 
>    does not give focus to any window and the only way to regain 

This was fixed in some release of Ion and then the fix was removed in
another because it didn't seem to be needed anymore and so on. At least
the version I'm running works fine. (Should be the latest release with
some patch that should be available in the mailing list archives for
last month.)

>    workspace. Is there a way to have ion display the number of each
>    window so I can quickly surmise what number I need to hit to get to a
(Continue reading)

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Simon Hosie | 17 Dec 2001 21:19
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Re: Problems going fullscreen and focus issues

On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 09:18:23PM +0200, Tuomo Valkonen wrote:
> The only
> program that I have come across that has a fullscreen mode that works
> in Ion and that is a "real" fullscreen in the sense that it completely
> overrides the window manager is gqview.

How does xlock do it?  Is that the same, or a special screensaver extension
or something?
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Henrik Enberg | 17 Dec 2001 21:27

Re: Problems going fullscreen and focus issues

Simon Hosie <simon.hosie <at> clear.net.nz> writes:

> On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 09:18:23PM +0200, Tuomo Valkonen wrote:
>> The only
>> program that I have come across that has a fullscreen mode that works
>> in Ion and that is a "real" fullscreen in the sense that it completely
>> overrides the window manager is gqview.
>
> How does xlock do it?  Is that the same, or a special screensaver extension
> or something?

When programming in X you can sidestep any WM an use raw xlib call if
you wish.  This is how xscreensaver is implemented and I guess xlock
too.  Those calls are quite low-level though, so most people will not
want to bother with them.  Sart by looking at the manpage for
XCreateWindow and take it from there if you wish to investigate
further.

Henrik
--

-- 
If a person doesn't have the capacity that we all want that person to
have, I suspect hope is in the far distant future, if at all.
		-- George W. Bush
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Gmane