[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#278461: xfwm4: Focus Follows Mouse Fails

[Michael Urman]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 09:44:14AM +0100, Simon Huggins wrote:
> Hmm, see if I could reproduce it consistently then we would have fixed
> it by now.

Completely understood. If you can't reproduce it, you can't know if
you've fixed it unless the code is more than obvious.

> I very occasionally see focus issues but generally it works and
> especially when I just spend time flipping from one to another.
> 
> Maybe it's a race condition and your computer takes a long time to
> redraw.  Is that possible?

It takes about half a second for the full redraw under Metacity; I think
it was about the same, perhaps ever-so-slightly faster (probably an
illusion due to ordering) under xfwm4.

Which reminds me, I might as well mention my current themes in case they
matter. I know I've reproduced across a handful, but just in case I
happen to have bad choices: 
  Controls: Clearlooks-Deepsky
  Window Border: the smallest one, probably called mini or similar.
  Icons: Gartoon

Also my instinct (FWIW) is that it's not a race condition. Under
Metacity I can see that whichever window my mouse is over on the new
desktop is drawn first, as if it has focus. Then if by the time all the
drawing completes my mouse is over a new window, the new window receives
focus as it should.

Under xfwm4 the drawing order is much more random. I think sometimes I
would see the new window appear to have focus until the redraw completed
at which point the initial window is refocused.

The possible exception to my theory of non-race condition is if it needs
to receive some sort of window-exit event, and due to the window not
being drawn yet the event isn't sent. On the other hand I don't remember
sawfish drawing windows in any particular order either, and it never
gave me the difficulty.

> That's the barrier to fixing it at the moment I'm afraid.

Again, completely understood. But I can't put up with it any longer
while there is other software that fills my needs.  The final thing
bugging me about Metacity that wasn't bugging me about xfwm is that I
can't seem to bind a single button action to
move-window-to-desktop-and-goto-that-desktop. Sawfish and kwm I was able
to do this on the mouse wheel. In xfwm I was able to do a keybinding. In
metacity it appears to require two separate keybindings.

I almost wonder if I could put a video together, but chances are the
refresh time on the video would be even worse than the desktop switch
time, and thus totally useless.

Michael
-- 
Michael Urman  [- mu@tortall.net -]