Gnome vs XFCE - Multiseat & window focus

[Zoltan Szecsei]

Hi Alan,
Thanks for your thoughts.
Please see my comments interspersed with yours.
Regards,
Zoltan

On 2012/03/29 13:10, Alan Cox wrote:
>> Does XFCE work in multiseat mode (or must it too wait for the F17
>> drivers/methodology)
> I've run multiple XFCE sessions at once as *different* users on the same
> box to different displays. That works - and to be honest - that ought to
> work on any desktop.
Good. That's how I do it with (older) Gnome - by editing xorg.conf and 
creating extra sessions in gdm.conf-custom
>
> Trying to do multiple as one user ends in tears.
not surprised :-)
>
>> Which screen-focus methodology does XFCE use? (Like the older Gnome, or
>> the newer Gnome)
> If you mean the window focus policy - its configurable. Mind you most
> things in xfce are 8)
errr... I did mention I did try these user accessible settings (in 
Gnome). I was looking for comments regarding strategy changes between 
the older and newer Gnome, or between XFCE & Gnome.
>
>> More on Screen Focus:
>> The GIS package is NOT a GUI package, but rather a bunch of commands you
>> can string together in BASH-syntax-like scripts that run within the
>> package. I make heavy usage of one command that allows you to position
>> the mouse somewhere on the graphics output screen, and then either
>> click, or touch a key on the keyboard. This command then returns "button
>> X Y" which you can trap, and then do further processing in your script.
>> In other words, I now have a 104-button mouse.
> Well sort of, but you are asking for problems if it's just using Xtest
> hackery to do this. When you click on a window the focus processing takes
> a moment of time and you really should be waiting for the target window
> to become mapped before firing input at it.
Target window never fires up (in this case) - this thought is however 
not relevant as it used to work 100% correctly on older Gnomes, hence my 
request insinuating "focus strategy" type differences in the DEs
>
>> In the older Gnomes, when my script requested an input from the graphics
>> locator, the focus would automatically drop to the graphics window, so
>> touching the keyboard instead of clicking the mouse would send the
>> "keypressed-X-Y" to the mouse-input que, and not the keyboard buffer. On
>> the newer Gnomes, this is extremely erratic, and touching the keyboard
>> instead of clicking the mouse sometimes (and not always) puts that key
>> depression into the keyboard buffer (to create later havoc), but hangs
>> my script until the operator manually focusses to the graphic screen and
>> then does the mouse-point-key-depression "click".
>>
>> Extremely annoying, so I was wondering if any of you had in-depth
>> knowledge of where this screen-focus issue might arise from
> The relevant question is probably how those tools work and how they
> should work. You can select a window to be focussed via the X protocol so
> you can use command line tools in the script to set focus, at least
> assuming the window manager isn't immediately overriding it as is likely
> to occur in the non click-to-focus modes that Gnome favours. However
> there are ways and means for that too.
This is a thought I never considered. Will explore it.
>
> If you are using Xfce then you can use "wmctrl" which may be what you
> want to actually sort the focussing out. It may also work in Gnome 3.
>
> You might also find Zenity worth looking at for some of this kind of work
> where you are nailing GUI and scripts stuff together. It provides a shell
> script interface to pop up all sorts of standard gtk dialogues, selectors
> etc.
Nice thought - thanks.
>
> Alan


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Zoltan Szecsei PrGISc [PGP0031]
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