Re: how to focus on desktop automatically if no windows open?

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Elijah Newren wrote:

> On 11/10/05, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
>  
>
> > > Metacity is doubtless focusing something or other. Try typing and see
> > > what it is...
> > >      
> > Well, I did, before even sending this message.
> > I hit the arrow keys, hoping to see a focus
> > ring or something moving somewhere, and hit
> > Enter, hoping something would activate.  But
> > no dice.
> >
> > The only things I can see are a panel (I only
> > have one) and nautilus's desktop.  If something
> > has focus, I don't know what it is.
> >    
>
> It's the designated no-focus-window (a window created by Metacity that
> the user never sees but is around to ensure that global keybindings
> work...).  That window can also get focused when certain bugs (e.g.
> X11's utterly stupid RevertTo behavior) are worked around.
>
>  
I think that the presence of an invisible no-focus window may be an 
accessibility violation (i.e. may violate '508' paragraph 1194.21c).  We 
might have to go to the explanatory "guidance" documents to be sure; 
basically a "well-defined, onscreen indication" of focus must always be 
present.  Now, if there IS no focus, is the absence of a well-defined 
onscreen indication a bug?  Perhaps the absence of focus is itself a 
violation, the correct interpretation is not immediately apparent.

My view/guess is that there should always be some keyboard focus (i.e. 
the 'no focus' case should not be allowed), and therefore some onscreen 
indication must always be provided.  The problem with the status quo is 
that the case of "no onscreen object is focussed" is not distinguishable 
to the end user from the case of "onscreen focus is not correctly 
indicated".

I understand the consistency problems with focussing the desktop by 
default, but then again sloppy focus is broken anyway by consensus 
(doesn't mean it's wrong to use it :-) ).  I, too, would expect that the 
desktop would get focus if all windows were de-focussed/closed, because 
indeed the desktop window DOES have special semantics from the end user 
point of view.  I think that focussing the DESKTOP-type window in the 
absence of other focus, as the last case in the else (if you will) is a 
reasonable behavior, and I don't think the consistency issues with 
sloppy focus are actually that problematic (i.e. "focus-follows-mouse 
only applies to 'regular' windows" seems like a sane policy)

Bill

> Cheers,
> Elijah
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