On 11/10/05, Shaun McCance <shaunm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sun, 2005-11-06 at 14:28 -0500, Brandon Kuczenski wrote: > > I'm using Gnome 2.10.2 on Debian. Sometimes I like to use the keyboard > > instead of the mouse to navigate the desktop. However, if I close a > > window (using, e.g., M-F4) I go into what appears to be a 'no-focus' > > state: pressing the arrow keys, tab key, enter, etc.. doesn't do anything. But global keybindings (e.g. Ctrl-Alt-Arrow or Alt-F2) function correctly, right? > > I know I can bind a key to "Hide all windows and focus the desktop" in the > > Keyboard Shortcuts dialog; It should be bound by default, Ctrl-Alt-D. No need to manually do so. > > is there any way to focus the desktop by default if no windows are open? Oh boy, that stupid function again (we've had so many bugs and problems with it--still do, such as input-only windows erroneously getting focus)... ;-) > Not to my knowledge, but this seems like a pretty reasonable > behavior for Metacity (Gnome's window manager) to have. I'm > CCing metacity-devel-list. It is? Could you explain why? I don't understand. Why would the user expect the window of type DESKTOP to be focused instead of one of the windows of type DOCK (e.g. a gnome-panel)? Why would the user expect it to be focused at all (especially since there's no way of notifying the user that it has focus)? If the user did expect the desktop window to be automatically focused, should it also focused according to MRU (most recently used) order in the list (i.e. if the user has five windows open, clicks on the desktop and does some stuff, switches to one of the five windows and closes that window, why should or shouldn't the desktop be given focus instead of one of the other four remaining windows)? We don't focus docks (e.g. gnome-panel) automatically if no other window is focused; but if we should do so for desktop windows should we do so for docks? That would seem really strange considering that we don't even focus docks when the user clicks on it (unless it's got a keyboard entry field such as gnome-dict or mini-commander). Also, in mouse and sloppy focus, we don't want the panels to be focused on mouse entry. It seems sane to treat the desktop the same way, besides, both modes seem totally broken if you try to focus the desktop on mouse entry. You may not see how this is related at first, but think of it this way: If you switch desktops and no window is under the mouse, which window gets focus? If you pick the desktop then you are being strangely inconsistent with the other invariants of these two focus modes. If you don't pick one of these, then focusing the desktop when all other windows become closed seem strangely inconsistent. To be honest, I virtually never use the desktop window (well, other than to occasionally look at my cute background) and I also am not a click-to-focus user (and I suspect that the usability scenario may be different for this focus mode than the other two), so focusing the desktop when no other normal window is available may be the correct thing but I just don't understand the usage cases very well. At least one other person has filed a bug about this, though, but I really can't fix stuff until I understand. Thanks, Elijah _______________________________________________ gnome-list mailing list gnome-list@xxxxxxxxx http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-list
