Re: FVWM: Ideas for focusing

From: Allen Brady Montz <bradym_at_cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 21 Nov 1996 10:42:52 -0700

Tim Phipps <tim_at_hpcpbla.bri.hp.com> writes:

...
> What I'm thinking of is that maybe a module could be written that moves the
> focus to newly created windows. I'm pretty sure that it's doable and it
> would make applications that pop up dialogs easier to use.
>
> Just focusing on new windows might be too simple so a further refinement may
> be to only switch focus if the new window is a transient_for the currently
> focused window. E.g. you have an application performing a task and you move
> to another apps window, if the first app pops up a window the focus would
> not switch. This would be my option but I don't know if the module protocol
> would be able to pass enough information.
>
> Real modality might be supportable with a module if modality info could be
> passed to modules. On every focus event a check of the windowlist could be
> done to see if any transient_for windows have modality on, if one does the
> focus could be switched. This would allow modality in a sloppyfocus
> environment.
>
> Any comments Tim Phipps.

Sounds like a good idea.

A while back I asked about whether others like this idea I had for a general
module that would basically keep an eye on what fvwm does for the purpose of
keeping lots of state about windows (so for exmaple you could keep a stack of
sizes that a window has had so you maximize a window horizonatally, maximize
vertically, and then be able to get back to it's original size). Then Barry
Warsaw (hope I spelled that right) and others pointed out that python is the
way to go here, and I agreed, and then I haven't done anything with it since
(damn grad school).

But I've been thinking about it since. Basically it would be a module (could
be writting in python or C) and you could send python code to it (or have it
read the code from a startup file) along the lines of: when you see fvwm event
X, run python code Y. Where the fvwm event could be something like NewWindow,
or a command that fvwm sent to the module via SentToModule (which lets you
send an arbitrary string to a module).

If we had such a module, it would be trivial to do what you want.

I think that I'll get cracking on it now. There already is a python "module"
out there, but it's pretty minimal. I think it's basically a Class that
interfaces python code to fvwm. Does anybody have more information?

-- 
 Brady Montz
 bradym_at_cs.arizona.edu
--
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Received on Thu Nov 21 1996 - 11:43:18 GMT

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