[openbox] sloppy focus "stealing"

[Ian Zimmerman]

On Sat, 21 May 2011 19:53:06 +0200
Mikael Magnusson <mikachu at gmail.com> wrote:

Ian>  I think that's a separate issue.  Openbox could really use a "warp
Ian> pointer when tabbing" option to force the pointer over the focussed
Ian> window after a switch.  Sawfish has that and I've got so used to it
Ian> that I'm considering patching openbox to add it.  Would such a
Ian> patch be considered?  I would not make it the default of course.

Mikael> It's hard to imagine how such a think could work in openbox,
Mikael> where focusing a window and raising it are two separate
Mikael> operations. Even if you forced windows to raise when using this
Mikael> mode, what about the case when an always-on-top window covers
Mikael> the window you switched to? I think it would be pretty intrusive
Mikael> to change the layer of either window. 

I will have to think about the always on top case.  Other than that, I'm
sure Sawfish has all these features too.

Mikael> The only other option would be to forbid to focus such windows,
Mikael> or move them. And for what purpose, to obstruct the view of the
Mikael> window with the mouse pointer?

1. Coherence.  The focus should _always_ be in the window under the
pointer.  Once you depart from that in "some" situations you end up not
knowing what to do in cases like 2 below.

2. (This is not relevant for tabbing, but it is for keyboard driven
moving and resizing) Sane way to interact through the keyboard only.
Right now, when I move a window with the keyboard, a different window
can get focussed, which means I cannot move (or do anything else to) the
first window again.

-- 
Ian Zimmerman <itz at buug.org>
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