Re: Gnome focus stealing prevention causing a problem

[Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org>]

On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 07:46:47PM -0400, Sean wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Sep 2006 00:23:00 +0200
> Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org> wrote:
> 
> > Report the bug to the VOIP application authors. They can contact
> > metacity developers if they need details (metacity-devel-list, see
> > http://mail.gnome.org/).
> 
> Thanks, I will.
> 
> > The bug is within the application. That should be fixed. There is no
> > possibility to change the behaviour of metacity. Note that this is part
> > of the window manager spec. Other window managers are likely to start
> > behaving the same.
> 
> It would be so much nicer if this feature could just be shut off.  At
> least during a transition period where applications could adjust to the
> new convention.  Instead, users have to suffer while applications are
> converted.  This particular application runs on Windows, Macs and many
> flavors of Linux, so it takes a long time for them to push a change out.
> Especially one that only affects such a small percentage of their users.

It is not something that can just be turned off (lots of code). It has
been in development for over 2 years (IIRC). Every GNOME release it
becomes a little stricter so it works better with applications that
correctly 'support focus prevention'. It is actually not supporting it,
is more about doing the right thing. It has been necessary to become
more stricter as applications have been doing ugly things to break focus
prevention instead of actually doing the right thing.

-- 
Regards,
Olav