I have an application that sends the focus to other windows but those windows then don't automatically display themselves in the foreground, i.e. on top of all the other windows. Where can I configure the preferences of my window manager so that this is the default behaviour?
In particular I'm using the Ctrl-0 and Ctrl-Shft-0 shortcuts in the MATLAB IDE to move between the command window and the editor window and although the focus seems to be transferred the new window doesn't automatically redraw itself in the foreground.
Not sure of a key binding off hand that does it, but if you alt-click on a window (which allows you to drag a window) it should come to the front.
As codeDr suggests, MATLAB is also kind of bad about repainting its windows. If you draw to a figure while code is executing, the figure does not update unless you execute drawnow or have some similar pause in the execution to allow the GUI to repaint. Since we're talking about MATLAB, the figure command will also cause the indicated figure to come to the front (in fact, it's harder to get it to not come to the front). So you could do figure(gcf) to bring the current figure to the front, or save the figure number with h = figure; and then later do figure(h). Incidentally, if you want to switch current figures without switching focus, set(0, 'CurrentFigure', h) should set h to the current figure.
Your window manager (probably Metacity?) implements focus-stealing prevention so that rogue apps don't pop up windows that would disturb your typing. Matlab needs to raise its window, and give it the input focus with the correct timestamp. If this is being done from a KeyPress event handler, the timestamp for setting the input focus would be the timestamp from the KeyPress event (i.e. the timestamp of the user-generated event that caused a window to be raised/focused).
To politely give the input focus to a window, google for _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW.
Usually when the window doesn't repaint, it means that the application's main application loop isn't running to refresh the window. Could it be that Matlab is doing some computation or disk activity when you are switching between windows?
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I created a single-window menu scheme using ncurses and got it working.
When I added a second window, I can no longer get my wgetch call to fire (or so it seems).
Somewhat confusing to me is the function prototype :
int wgetch(WINDOW *win);
which says wgetch somehow depends on the window but I don't get the relationship - how does "the window" matter? If it does, and I have more than one window, which one do I use? Also, https://linux.die.net/man/3/wgetch says "There is just one input queue for all windows." which tells me "the window" is a "don't care".
Can someone explain?
Thanks.
The window matters because wgetch refreshes the window before reading characters. That's in the wgetch manual page:
If the window is not a pad, and it has been moved or modified since the
last call to wrefresh, wrefresh will be called before another character
is read.
Each window (including stdscr) may have been altered since the last call to wrefresh. If you make changes in one window without refreshing it, and then call wgetch in another window, the changes to the first window are not automatically displayed. You can use wnoutrefresh to combine refreshes, e.g., using that for the first window and then use the wrefresh done automatically for the second window to refresh both.
I want to minimize the main window of a C#/Eto app and switch to another program. But when a timer in the Eto app fires it opens a new window, which I want to see. It should be displayed on top of all other windows currently open. The focus may switch to that window, but it's ok if not.
Using BringToFront() of the Form class does not work.
What else could I do?
Due to the way Apple made OS X, you are unable to make a window go to the top with programming. On Windows it is different.
Good luck!
When I am running firefox as my active application and do a [ctrl]+[shift]+T, firefox opens a new tab. Hoever when I do a [ctrl]+[alt]+T, linux opens a new terminal window. Just made me ponder over the possible internals of this operation.
I had assumed that the control over stdin lies with the active application and if it reads something that makes sense to it, it goes ahead and does it. Now I feel that before the input is even put into stdin, the kernel scans it for the shortcuts that are relevant to it, and only the ones leftover are passed onto stdin, and from there to the user space applications.
Is this view accurate?
You are correct about what is causing it, just not the details. It's not the kernel that is swallowing it in this case, it's the Window Manager.
Your keyboard shortcut for Ctrl+Alt+T is getting eaten by your window manager. If you go to your Window Manager keyboard shortcuts, find the one bound to Ctrl+Alt+T and un-define it, it will work in FF properly.
The WM is a "layer" if you will that receives all events and passes on the ones that it determines are relevant to the underlying application.
I'm working on a I/O verification tool based on Linux in a game project. It is written in C++, and,since using the same I/O module as our game, it's based on OIS 1.2. Thus, though all I need is to print users' inputs on the console, I still need to create a window for OIS.
So here comes my question: How can I create a mapped window while it is still invisible and processes keyboard events?
I can't unmapped the window in that it won't process any keyboard event anymore. I also can't find function for show/hide a window.(maybe I search through a wrong diretion...)
My little tool works fine now except there is a stupid top-level empty window which needs to be focused for processing keyboard events...
Any advise is welcomed.
Thanks!!!
After reading this post: Linux/X11 input library without creating a window,
I realized my problem was that I misunderstood the philosophy of X11. All I need to do is simply pass the root window handle to OIS, and set the x11_grabkeyboard flag as true. The only drawback is maybe I can hardly debug my program with gdb since the keyboard is grabbed...
Though my situation is solved, there is one thing left.
Every article I read said an InputOnly window won't be visible and is capable for handling input events, while my InputOnly window is absolutely visible after mapped...
Maybe it's my Linux, or again, a misunderstanding...
I am working on old Motif-based application for Linux. I want to be able to programmatically change the active window of our application. I can redirect the input by using XSetInputFocus() function and the keyboard input start to go there, but XReconfigureWMWindow() and XRaiseWindow() functions just don't work.
I've read that Window Managers try to stop this behaviour, so tried to disable configure redirection, but this doesn't work either. Any ideas how to make one of my own windows on top of the window stack?
There is a tiny program called wmctrl available (at least in Debian/Ubuntu it is in standard distribution) which is able to perform many operations on windows and desktops, and handles plenty of window managers. I'd suggest testing whether it works in your environment, and if so, peeking at its sources.
You may find the answer to this is dependent on the Window Manager the user is using, or even what settings they've given to the Window Manager. I like to set my Window Managers to do "focus follows mouse", which means you can't send the focus to a window that I haven't put my mouse on, unless you also warp the mouse there (is that function called XWarpMouse?).