Re: More traditional GNOME behavior [Was: Get nautilus OFF OF MY SYSTEM!!!]

[Bret Mogilefsky <mogul-gnome gelatinous com>]

On Mon, May 07, 2001 at 06:14:22PM -0600, E. Joshua Rigler wrote:
> If somebody (i.e. a regular GNOME developer) has the time, it would be
> extremely useful to have a summary of all the options that should be
> changed to recover GNOME 1.2, or even 1.0, default behavior.  There are
> several fundamental things that I have not been able to reproduce
> through the "Gnome Control Center" since upgrading to newer versions of
> GNOME.

As others have said, all of your "Gnome behavior" gripes are related to
specific settings in the window manager, Sawfish, which is one application.
Each of the things you describe below works fine for me with the same
settings using the Sawfish in stock Ximian Gnome 1.4.  It may be that you
have leftover settings from a previous version of Sawfish that aren't
playing well with more recent versions.  I highly suggest you check out
your ~/.sawfishrc and ~/.sawfish/custom files, perhaps even moving them
aside while you restart to see if reapplying the settings results in the
behavior you expect.  If this is the case, then I'm sure the sawfish list
would like a bug report about not checking preference sanity between
upgrades.

> -left-click on covered window won't leave that window covered.  This is
> useful becaus I use "enter-only" as my focus option, with "raise windows
> when focused" disabled, so that I can copy text from a window on the
> bottom of the stack, and paste it to a window on the top.

Works fine here.

> -Since upgrading to 1.4, it seems that even though focus moves to a new
> window when my mouse cursor enters that window, I have to click twice
> for mouse input to actually be recognized.  For example, imagine that as
> I type this message, I decide to move my mouse to my "Gnome Control
> Center" and click on the "Cancel" button...I have to click once, which
> brings the window to the foreground, then twice, to get the "Cancel"
> button to actually be pressed!  Is this a bug?

This works for me.  The "Does click-to-focus mode pass the click through to
the window" check in the "Focus" page in the Control Center should be
orthoganal to enter-only focus, but you might play with it and see if it
affects anything.  If this option isn't visible, change to "expert
settings" in the Meta page long enough to use it.

> -"Give focus to windows when they haven't asked for it" doesn't work. 
> By default, whichever version of GNOME shipped with RH-7.0 always gave
> focus (when clicked, or the mouse was over it...depending on my settings
> at the time) to my IDL (Interactive Data Language, by RSI) plot windows,
> even though their WM-hint didn't request it.  This is important for
> programs like IDL that insist on private colormaps!  Since upgrading to
> GNOME 1.2 (and the feature remains in 1.4), the child IDL plot window
> only takes focus when I actually try to move or resize it, not just when
> my mouse cursor is over it.  When I stop moving it, and stop pressing
> the mouse button, it loses focus again, thus losing any colors it might
> be displaying.

I don't have something requiring its own colormap to test with, but again,
I'm able to force focus using that checkbox everywhere I tried it.

> Feedback is very much appreciated.

OK, you asked for it... 

Your first mail should have looked like your second, which was much more
reasoned and approachable.  Coming into a list and spraying bile around
randomly doesn't help us help you at all.  It made me hover over the
"kill-thread" key for that long instant rather than immediately seeing if I
could help.  If a setting looks like it should be doing what you want, but
isn't, then approach it as a bug you've encountered or something
misconfigured, not as an indictment of the desktop effort as a whole.  Yes,
this is a stable release, but that doesn't mean there are zero bugs... If
you find something new wrong, everyone wants to know so they can either fix
it or help you get around it.  However, it's much more difficult to work
around a reactive, panicky, accusatory personality, so just chill out
before you send the mail.


Bret