FC5: first impressions

[Ron Yorston]

n0dalus wrote:
>On 3/26/06, Ron Yorston <rmy at tigress.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> If anyone needs a pre-release version of metacity with configurable new
>> window focus I have it here:
>>
>>    http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/metacity/fc5.html
>>
>
>I'd be curious to see a description of how each behaviour acts. I know
>some of the behaviours are listed on the Gnome bugzilla but there's a
>lot to read there.
>
>I think other people would also be curious about what different
>focusing styles exist in Gnome or will exist.

My patch currently has two settings:  "smart" which is the pre-2.14
behaviour and "strict" which enables the experimental strict focus
approximation mode.  (Neither of these is a particularly good name,
as the smart mode isn't really smart and the strict mode isn't really
strict.)

The smart mode simply applies the user's current focus policy to new
windows.  So if you're using focus follows mouse and the new window
appears at your mouse position it gets focus.  Some people don't like
this and claim it can be dangerous.

The experimental strict focus approximation mode tries to prevent
windows started from a hardcoded list of terminals from getting focus.
In part it does this by putting the new window underneath the terminal,
which lots of people find objectionable.

In the GNOME Bugzilla Elijah Newren has suggested additional modes
which might be called "always" and "never", though these haven't been
implemented yet.  I guess that "always" would force the new window always
to have focus while "never" would never give focus to new windows.  This
latter is what some people would call "strict".

All of these modes apply an additional layer of behaviour beyond what you
currently get with the click/mouse/sloppy focus modes (and are independent
of those modes).

Ron