click-to-raise-and-focus behaviour

[Brandon Allbery]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 3:52 PM, René J.V. <rjvbertin at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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?
>

It depends on how they manage window stacking. Some window managers just
use XRaiseWindow/XLowerWindow, which works like twm. Others use
XRestackWindows, which can only restack within the X11 windows and can't
raise an X11 window over a native window because native windows are
invisible to it.

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine associates
allbery.b at gmail.com                                  ballbery at sinenomine.net
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad        http://sinenomine.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/attachments/20150129/0abd115d/attachment.html>