xfwm window focus nuances

[Olivier Fourdan]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Einar Lielmanis <einars at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.

That patch never makes it to git AFAIK.

> 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.

Focus stealing prevention instead, maybe?

> 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?

That's most leikely focus stealing prevention combined with support
for source indication in NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW:

  http://standards.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/wm-spec-1.4.html#id2550738

and

  http://standards.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/wm-spec-1.4.html#sourceindication

Cheers,
Olivier.