Re: how to focus on desktop automatically if no windows open?

[Brandon Kuczenski <brandon 301south net>]

On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Elijah Newren wrote:

> On 11/10/05, Brandon Kuczenski <b 301south net> wrote:
> > On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Elijah Newren wrote:
>
> > > It's the designated no-focus-window (a window created by Metacity that
> > > the user never sees but is around to ensure that global keybindings
> > > work...).  That window can also get focused when certain bugs (e.g.
> > > X11's utterly stupid RevertTo behavior) are worked around.
> >
> > Okay, so a window that doesn't exist and should never be seen by the user
> > has focus, but the desktop, which fills 100% of the visible screen space,
> > is an 'utterly stupid' choice for focus?
> >
> > That seems strange to me.
>
> You totally misunderstood what I was saying.  ;-)  See
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125492.  X11's RevertTo
> behavior means X will often make no window have focus (not even an
> unseen offscreen window), which results in the keyboard being totally
> nonfunctional for X until the user clicks on some window.  It's a bug
> in the X protocol.  We have to attempt to figure out when that has
> happened and manually fix it up.
>
> I brought it up just to try to help explain why the no_focus_window
> exists, not to explain why we don't focus the desktop when all
> "normal" windows are closed.

Okay.  I understand now.

> > Perhaps it would help if we explained our metaphors.  Here's mine: a
> > desktop is the surface on top of which all things with which I am working
> > lie.  The mouse pointer is used to point to the thing I am interested in
> > (I am a mouse-focus user as well, Elijah).
>
> mouse focus or sloppy focus?  Sorry to have to ask, but many are
> unaware of the difference and claim mouse when they mean sloppy.  I
> suspect you really do mean mouse from something else you said, but I'd
> like to be sure.  I'll postpone responding to most of the rest of what
> you wrote until I know the answer to that so that I can respond
> correctly.

I didn't know there was a distinction prior to this conversation; after 
looking at your reference, I have decided I am a strict mouse-focus user 
(which isn't too surprising: I am fairly dogmatic).  I don't know if my 
window manager is providing mouse- or sloppy-focus because the dialog 
doesn't use those terms.  On Desktop -> Preferences -> Window, I have 
"Select windows when the mouse moves over them" checked.

> No, it wasn't part of an outside conversation, I just must suck at
> properly explaining things.  ;-)  Basically, I was just trying to say
> that making one little change in focus policy often causes
> inconsistencies elsewhere unless you have a good overall view of how
> things should work and your change is made to be consistent with that.

Good point.  I certainly have a new respect for some of the complexity 
inolved in designing a good user interface (I'm enjoying reading the 
discussion on bug 101190).  That said, I still think the desktop deserves 
focus over, say, a docking window like the panel precisely because there 
is no real established keynav for panels (AFAIK) and, based on what you 
said, it doesn't sound like panels ever have focus. I want to stress again 
that I use the desktop as a storage space for current materials and 
sometimes I'd like to refer to them without mousing.

Basically, I feel like right now I have to 'click-to-focus' the desktop, 
even though I don't click-to-focus anything else.

Other than this, I have no focus-related suggestions, and I have been 
quite happy with the metacity interface.

-Brandon