Re: Moving the focus off a client window

[Nathaniel Smith <njs pobox com>]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 11:06 PM, Sam Spilsbury <smspillaz gmail com> wrote:
> I'd like to be able to have some kind of protocol to handle this case,
> and initially I thought that maybe I could change the input hint on
> the client window to FALSE and then send a synthetic FocusIn event to
> the client window, at which point the window manager would receive
> that and move the focus off to something else since that window is not
> allowed to be focussed. However, the ICCCM is vague on this point, and
> says that where WM_TAKE_FOCUS is not present in WM_PROTOCOLS and
> InputHint is FALSE in WM_HINTS then the window has "No Input - The
> client never expects keyboard input. An example would be xload or
> another output-only client. ". However, it does not state what should
> happen should the client explicitly request input focus, which is what
> is going on here. I would imagine in this case that should a client
> request input focus to a window that does not allow input, that the
> window manager should focus the next appropriate window, whether that
> be a transient window, an ancestor, a group member or the next most
> active window.
>
> What does everyone think of something like the following:
>
>  * Client changes InputHint to false and removes WM_TAKE_FOCUS from WM_PROTOCOLS

It seems to me that this should be sufficient -- just clarify the spec
to make sure it's clear that a window can transition from focusable to
not-focusable. I don't see what the stuff below adds:

>  * Client sends a synthetic FocusIn event to its own window with the
> window member being set to the client, mode being NotifyNormal and
> detail being NotifyDetailNone
>  * WM gets the FocusIn event on the client window, sees that InputHint
> is false, moves the focus off to the next appropriate window.

-- Nathaniel