[Xlib] Force Raise/Map/Focus a given Window

[Xavier Bestel]

Le mardi 12 août 2008 à 12:42 -0400, Owen Taylor a écrit :
> On Mon, 2008-08-11 at 14:25 -0500, Andrew Troschinetz wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm trying to force raise/present/focus a window in Gnome/Metacity  
> > 2.18 (RHEL5) but it seems like a "don't steal focus" feature is  
> > preventing me from doing so. The following code works in Gnome/ 
> > Metacity 2.8 (RHEL4), but note quite in RHEL5.
> > 
> > What I mean is: If the window is minimized (unmapped) then the  
> > following code will map, raise, and focus the window correctly in  
> > either RHEL4 or RHEL5. But in RHEL5 only, if the window currently  
> > doesn't have focus, but is mapped and raised (say another window has  
> > focus and is ontop of the window I want to present), then the  
> > following code only results in the taskbar item for the window blinking.
> > 
> > So my question is, is there a problem in my code? Is there a known  
> > workaround for this, some Xlib function I should be calling here? Or  
> > does anyone happen to know off the top of their head if this is a new  
> > feature in RHEL5 that can be easily disabled?
> 
> You can:
> 
>  A) Get a current server timestamp by changing a property and looking
>     at the timestamp on the subsequent PropertyNotify event.
> 
>  B) If mapping a new window, use that timestamp for _NET_WM_USER_TIME 
> 
>  C) To activate an existing window, send a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message to
>     the root window with that timestamp
> 
> (See the extended window manager hints specification for details about
> the _NET_* properties and messages.)
> 
> I think _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW should be supported in RHEL4 as well, so you
> don't need to check for a supporting window manager.
> 
> A little complicated to do maybe, but that's the nature of using Xlib
> directly. 

Maybe look also at libwnck, it's made exactely for this sort of things
(interacting with the window manager, writing tools such as taskbar or
windows list)

HTH,
	Xav