Re: Another focus matter...

        Hi lanas!

On 23 Feb 06 at 13:28, "lanas" (lanas ) wrote:

 lanas> Example: a ComboBox in a form. When the user clicks on the
 lanas> ComboBox to make a selection, the form that has the ComboBox looses
 lanas> focus in such a way that it's window title bar becomes inactive
 lanas> and, according to the desktop manager (KDE in this case), will
 lanas> become greyed out or otherwise adopt the inactive color scheme in
 lanas> use.

I fought long and hard against this, and gave up. This issue is specific
to setup of X11 window managers, and the issue is basically such that
since the pop-up list is, technically speaking, a new top-level window
(albeit without decorations), there can be only one focused top-level
window, and the master window loses the focus. In X11 there's no separate
concept of active/non-active window as in win32/os2, where an active
window can be defocused. In general, window manager notices that a focus
is switched, and repaints window titles accordingly.

I didn't investigate how other X11 apps fight this, I suspect that KDE in
particular might use its NET_WM flags for this purpose, or probably
WM_TRANSIENT_FOR_HINT might help here.

 lanas> This major shift of focus for a combo box is unusual in
 lanas> applications and somewhat distractive for the common user who may
 lanas> wonder what serious thing is happening when only a selection is
 lanas> being made.

I agree, it is unexpected, to say the least. I'll try to look at it,
but I won't promise anything - I might fail again :(

-- 
Sincerely,
	Dmitry Karasik