[openbox] Re: Focus to last window problem

Mikael Magnusson mangosoft at comhem.se
Thu Feb 14 10:23:43 EST 2008


On Wed, 13 Feb 2008, Alan wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:31:17 +0100, Mikael Magnusson wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008, Alan wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:46:54 +0100, Mikael Magnusson wrote:
>>>
>>> I usually bind Alt-F4 to delete window and Alt-F1 to iconify window.
>>> Quite often, I iconify or delete bunch of windows using the repetition
>>> capability of the keyboard. I know that I have 5 windows under my mouse
>>> pointer, I make a long press on Alt-F1 and all my windows are
>>> iconified. That used to work with fvwm, sawfish and icewm (if I
>>> remember well for the last one). When the mouse is on the root window,
>>> no window has the focus.
>>>
>>> The problem with openbox is that the focus then goes to another window
>>> which is not under my mouse pointer, with the nasty effects you can
>>> imagine with a repeat rate of 40 keystrokes/seconds :-) The Alt-F1 key
>>> has an effect near from Windows-D !!
>>
>> With underMouse on, the focus should go to the window under the cursor
>> as long as there is one, and after that it will go to the last focused
>> window. Is this what happens?
>
> Yes, it works perfectly like this.
>
>
>> I have never heard of someone grouping windows they want to use together
>> by putting them on top of eachother, it's sort of a strange idea to me.
>> I have never felt the need to only iconify/close the windows under my
>> cursor. Maybe you should group these windows by putting them on another
>> workspace instead? This also has the advantage that you can see them at
>> the same time.
>
> In fact this is not at all a deliberate grouping. I should have been more
> descriptive. Just a usual example:
>
> I (re-)start my favorite web browser (galeon) which has session
> history, on one virtual desktop, shared with something like 6 terminal
> emulators (xterm). It generally creates something like 20-30 big
> windows (80% of the screen) with many tabs (I have the habit of
> keeping articles I want to read soon open). Given the size of the
> windows, they are stacked one onto another. I just place the mouse where
> there is no xterm, hit Alt-F1 and every browser window is iconified in 1
> second.
>
> With openbox, I iconify my whole desktop.

This is sort of an uncommon use case, I feel. I think this would still 
work with openbox if you're more careful with the keyrepeat, it will 
iconify the galeons before it gets to the xterms.

We are also thinking about a feature where you can combine actions with 
per application tags, so you could say maybe something like
<action name="iconify" tag="galeon"/> in a bind, or maybe something that 
pops up a dialog that lets you write in a string that matches titles or 
wm_class. Or have it as a separate action that lets you tag windows based 
on that, and then the next action could be anything and acts on all tagged 
windows. This is still quite tentative though, of course. :)

--
Mikael Magnusson



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