GNOME and the way forward

Posted Aug 18, 2005 17:31 UTC (Thu) by newren (subscriber, #5160) [Link]

If one starts a program in Windows XP and then gives the focus to an existing window (by clicking on it) before the new window is mapped, the new window is placed in the stacking order just below the focused window, and the current window retains focus. This seems to work well enough that most people don't even realize that it's happening.

This is what we do in Metacity as well. It's an implementation of the focus stealing prevention spec pioneered by Lubos Lunak.

Mapping the new window second-from-the-top is nice too, since mapping a "dead" window over the top of the currently focused window is almost as bad as stealing focus.

Ugh. Others who have requested a never-focus-new-windows have also requested a always-place-new-windows-on-top-even-if-not-given-focus. This is already a niche group. Why this explosion of options (and no, it's not just one more--you are only one of the people requesting just one more)? WMs that are the union of all features of all other WMs (e.g. Sawfish) aren't maintainable. Sorry to give this rant again, but N features toggles results in 2^N testing and maintenance workload which is just not realistic. I think it's worthwhile to try to add options to cover the larger of the niche usage groups (a strict focus option that causes new windows to not get focus, as proposed by Havoc in bug 152004 and heavily requested here, sounds reasonable). However (I hope I don't come across as offensive here), Metacity just isn't going to cover every case. Openbox, flwm, KWin, sawfish, fvwm, etc. (most of which can and have been used by users under Gnome), exist for users whom we can't satisfy with the preferences we are willing to add.