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Re: Raise-on-Focus
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Re: Raise-on-Focus


  • Subject: Re: Raise-on-Focus
  • From: "John J. Francini" <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 11:49:29 -0500

I support this position. Apple's insistence on making only the topmost window liable for input is a supreme irritation for me. More often than not, I am unable to find a window set configuration that will actually let me see data I need *and* input information in another window because of this policy. This is why I am not using quartz-wm, but unfortunately, given there is no interleaving of X and Quartz windows, I'm still far from a comfortable environment.

I've tried X window managers where focus and window-raising were not connected -- the one I remember best would give focus to whatever window the mouse cursor was in. I found that one to be very irritating to use, for a very simple reason: under X, the cursor doesn't disappear when you start typing in a window -- as opposed to MacOS (both OSX and prior). Inevitably, the cursor would be right in the middle of where I was typing. First gut reaction: throw the cursor out of the window. Of course, this causes whatever window that the cursor lands in to get focus.


For me, the answer to the need to have windows with needed info alongside windows where I'm inputting that info (or a permutation thereof) is very simple: screen real-estate. Lots of it. Since the Mac supports multiple monitors, I have two 1152x960 monitors side-by-side and can spread out across both monitors as I need. As these CRT-based monitors are getting older, I'm seriously considering either a pair of the new 17" LCDs or one of the 23" super-wide ones.

And perhaps I'm weird in my window behavior desires, but I actually prefer the old MacOS 9-and-before app-centric window behavior. Because of this I run a program on OSX that both gives me the old MacOS 9 right-hand-side application menu as well as the old app-centric window behavior. Consequently, since quartz-wm behaves the same way that I've made the OSX windows work, the integration has one less seam for me than it might for others who are used to or like the default OSX behavior.

To me, the biggest problem with X11.app/quartz-wm is that certain commercial system-management apps from HP don't get along well with it. (I'll not elaborate here -- I wrote a long message about it before, and I will turn that into a formal bug-filing with Apple soon.)

John Francini
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John Francini <mailto:email@hidden>
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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: Raise-on-Focus
      • From: magenta <email@hidden>
    • Re: Raise-on-Focus
      • From: "Joseph R. Kiniry" <email@hidden>
References: 
 >Re: Raise-on-Focus (From: "Joseph R. Kiniry" <email@hidden>)

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