xfwm window focus nuances

[Einar Lielmanis]

Since the release of XFCE, in a git version of the xfwm there have been
changes that don't allow focusing the window which doesn't have the
mouse pointer, if "focus follows mouse" option is set.

Some reasoning behind that can be found in bugzilla [1]. While that
seems to work for the most mouse-focus-followers, sadly this breaks
another usage: focusing specific windows by global keyboard shortcuts.

The focusing, assigning something like "wmctrl -a -x urxvt" [2] to a
shortcut, has worked very nice so far, alleviating the pain of chaotic
alt-tab switching or mouse navigation. As focus-follows-mouse option
changes the focus only when mouse enters/leaves a window, there had
been no problems with this approach.

Now, any window will refuse to receive focus at all times, except for
some wm-specific moments (like, mouse movement, or alt-tab). Alt-tab,
which anyway allows to change the focus of the window, regardless of
the pointer position.

So, generally,  I think that a possibility to focus any given window
regardless of the mouse settings, like alt-tab does, is a good thing
and has its uses.

Any thoughts?


Kind regards,

Einar Lielmanis



1: http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4679
2: http://bugpipe.com/post/228595413/custom-kde-style-window-shortcuts-in-gnome