click-to-raise-and-focus behaviour

[René J.V. Bertin]

Hello,

I have been noticing a strange difference in window raising behaviour between window managers, using XQuartz 2.7.7 . Openbox, xfwm4 and WindowMaker (from MacPorts) all raise windows so to speak in the X11 layer. So if a Mac application is active and frontmost, clicking on an X11 window will make it (and XQuartz) active and raise it w.r.t. the other X11 windows, but will not bring that window in front of the active Mac window. That's a severe limitation, because it means going to the Dock and clicking on the XQuartz icon, or using the AppSwitcher. Worse, even the window manager command to raise a window (or make it "always in front") is not enough to bring the window forward.

Not so with twm, or the ctwm clone I've been using. With this wm, clicking on the window titlebar will bring the window to the front as it should. Clicking inside the window doesn't, but then the keyboard shortcut to raise the window is enough to complete the action.

Any idea where this difference comes from? Twm and ctwm are probably the most archaic in the bunch I just tried, so is there something they aren't doing right ... which is actually not-so-right when managing windows on an XQuartz server?

Thanks,
René