_NET_WM_[GET_|TAKE_|REQUEST_]FOCUS & urgency

[Luke Schierer <lschiere users sf net>]

Hi,
I am one of the gaim developers, and am writing this list at the
prompting of Warren, our RedHat packager.

Warren notified us of the change to focus policy that gnome/metacity
has implemented, and I am happy to learn that efforts are finally
underway to address this significant issue.

We (gaim developers) were, however, dismayed to learn what direction
these efforts had taken.  Our reaction, detailed at great length in
#gaim on irc.freenode.net, has been compiled into
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/luke/windowstuff which I include here.

While specs are a wonderful thing, it is not good to attempt to
re-invent the entire interaction between window managers/other
aspects of a desktop environment and applications in place of the
existing ICCCM spec.

Hopefully you all will find some of our points/ideas/statements
useful, and will come up with something better than either the
existing behavior or the new, arguably worse behavior (short of
rewriting all existing legacy X applications that might create a
window).

Luke Schierer
Gaim Support

* window focus should only be transfered from one window to another by the direct action of the user.
	* The WM does not know when a new window is user initiated or not.
	* The application that requests the new window does know
	* In the case of new application launch, this yields a useful result: you can start several things
	  in the background (or on login) and not have your focus jerked around as they start.
	* While it is acceptable to design a specification by which an application which does not currently
	  have focus can request it either by creation of a new window, or for an existing window, such
	  a specification should be an opt-in policy.  quoting Etan:
		  "If, however, people feel that there should be a way for an application to request focus on
		  mapping that's fine. Such a specification should be written such that it is an opt-in concept,
		  not an opt-out one (or one that requires all applications to follow for it to work). For
		  example, given our experience with metacity (and the focus stealing prevention spec) the fact
		  that gaim does not do anything to accomodate the spec used to cause all of our windows to be
		  on top and focused, and now causes all our windows to be popped up underneath other windows.

		  This is really an unacceptable way to design a new specification, especially when dealing with
		  something as old as X and which has legacy applications which one wants to continue to have act
		  correctly. If the purpose of this spec is to only make windows that really want focus on map
		  to get it than require that *those applications* set the property to some agreed upon value or
		  set of values, and that anything which does not is going to be treated in a wm consistent and
		  non-annoying fashion (i.e. not given focus on map, but also not hidden and therefore requiring
		  further specification to function usefully)."
* new windows should be created at the top level unless specifically requested otherwise by the starting
  application.  Placement should reflect some overall policy of the WM, preferably a policy that the
  user understands and can predict.  Remembering previous placement is a reasonable, but not required,
  part of said policy.
	* Window stacking and focus policy should be at least somewhat decoupled.
	* It is acceptable for a window manager's overall focus policy to include some concept of absolute
	  Z-level and restrict an application to a single Z-level.  Such a policy, however, should include
	  some method to notify the user that a new window has been created.
* Applications which currently have focus should be able to hint if a window said application has
  created gets focus or not.  It should be able to do so without changing the level at which the window
  is created (assuming the hint is followed).
	* While it may be valuable to specify or further specify how this should be done, _NET_WM_USER_TIME
	in it's current overloaded state does not seem to us to be a viable solution for this. We would
	suggest something like a _NET_WM_[GET_|TAKE_|REQUEST_]FOCUS property.
* Applications which do not have focus should not be able to pull focus from another application in a
  way that the user cannot disable or modify.  Changes to individual applications at a source code
  level should not be necessary for this behavior.
  * _NET_WM_STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION may have merit here if used to indicate that a window which requests
    focus was not given in so as to comply with the WM's policies on focus.
* Window managers and and applications should  both support both the ICCCM and fd.o specs
	* That being said, ICCCM has been a specification since 1993, and (for example) gnome should be
	  supporting urgency before they get too upset about us not supporting
	  _NET_WM_STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION.  Further, we undertake to implement support for this after
	  Gnome supports urgency.