Comments on: raise_on_click: not what you think http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/ "Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios." Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:08:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Thomas Thurman http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/comment-page-1/#comment-68 Thomas Thurman Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:49:32 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/#comment-68 @Anders: I don't think this particular bug is the right forum to ask about that. (As you note, the programmatic raise behaviour is independent of raise_on_click.) I will try to put together a discussion of why Metacity behaves this way later. @Anders:
I don’t think this particular bug is the right forum to ask about that. (As you note, the programmatic raise behaviour is independent of raise_on_click.) I will try to put together a discussion of why Metacity behaves this way later.

]]> By: Anders Brander http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/comment-page-1/#comment-66 Anders Brander Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:50:09 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/#comment-66 Something tells me that metacity should respect programmatic raise requests with or without raise_on_click, then the power users who disables this feature will not be surprised by unrelated side effects? Something tells me that metacity should respect programmatic raise requests with or without raise_on_click, then the power users who disables this feature will not be surprised by unrelated side effects?

]]> By: Thomas Thurman http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/comment-page-1/#comment-48 Thomas Thurman Thu, 22 Nov 2007 04:09:59 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/#comment-48 Yes, you're right, it does. I wrote this on my lunchbreak from trying to understand the documentation and the bug reports and from whatever memories I had of the history of it all, and then tried things out for real, and I found that I had written the "It does not" part backwards and then there was no time left and I had to stay late fixing things :( On the other hand: <i>Um, one resizes a window by clicking on it, thus raise-on-click actually matches here quite nicely. And uh, raising as a side-effect of the click to start the resize is default behavior. In all window managers I know of. And if this is so bad, why do you say to leave it on?</i> Maybe it's just late, but I don't understand this. I don't think I said it was bad to raise as a side-effect of the click, and if you leave it on it <i>will</i> raise as a side-effect of the click anyway. I should probably just delete this post, but I think we possibly need a post saying what ROC does, why the documentation says to leave ROC set to true, and why you shouldn't complain about the result if it does what it says it will do. Yes, you’re right, it does. I wrote this on my lunchbreak from trying to understand the documentation and the bug reports and from whatever memories I had of the history of it all, and then tried things out for real, and I found that I had written the “It does not” part backwards and then there was no time left and I had to stay late fixing things :(

On the other hand:

Um, one resizes a window by clicking on it, thus raise-on-click actually matches here quite nicely. And uh, raising as a side-effect of the click to start the resize is default behavior. In all window managers I know of. And if this is so bad, why do you say to leave it on?

Maybe it’s just late, but I don’t understand this. I don’t think I said it was bad to raise as a side-effect of the click, and if you leave it on it will raise as a side-effect of the click anyway.

I should probably just delete this post, but I think we possibly need a post saying what ROC does, why the documentation says to leave ROC set to true, and why you shouldn’t complain about the result if it does what it says it will do.

]]> By: newren http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/comment-page-1/#comment-46 newren Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:43:39 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/#comment-46 Hehehe. I leave it off all the time other than when trying to reproduce metacity bug reports. Oh, and your explanation is a bit confusing: "It does not, as is widely assumed, cause windows to be raised when they’re clicked." Uh, it does too... "“raise on click and also on a shedload of other random things like resizing” Um, one resizes a window by clicking on it, thus raise-on-click actually matches here quite nicely. And uh, raising as a side-effect of the click to start the resize is default behavior. In all window managers I know of. And if this is so bad, why do you say to leave it on? I would understand if you called the "off" behavior confusing and then say to not use it, but you are calling the default behavior confusing and asking users to leave it that way. Or so it sounds... Hehehe. I leave it off all the time other than when trying to reproduce metacity bug reports.

Oh, and your explanation is a bit confusing:

“It does not, as is widely assumed, cause windows to be raised when they’re clicked.”

Uh, it does too…

““raise on click and also on a shedload of other random things like resizing”

Um, one resizes a window by clicking on it, thus raise-on-click actually matches here quite nicely. And uh, raising as a side-effect of the click to start the resize is default behavior. In all window managers I know of. And if this is so bad, why do you say to leave it on?

I would understand if you called the “off” behavior confusing and then say to not use it, but you are calling the default behavior confusing and asking users to leave it that way. Or so it sounds…

]]> By: Hans de Graaff http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/comment-page-1/#comment-43 Hans de Graaff Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:56:26 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2007/11/21/raise-on-click/#comment-43 So I have raise_to_click off and I really, really like it that way. It's just such a nice power user feature to be able to work in a partially obscured window, including clicking buttons in it and not have the window pop to the front and demand all and any attention just because I happened to interact with it. It makes me feel more in control and productive this way. Just thought I'd throw out a use case for it. I understand that this is really not a windowing mode that should be on by default as its behaviour is probably very confusing to unexpecting users, but I am glad that it's still available as a gconf key. Then again, there was a time at which this behaviour was gone for some time and I just had to patch metacity on every update. :-) So I have raise_to_click off and I really, really like it that way. It’s just such a nice power user feature to be able to work in a partially obscured window, including clicking buttons in it and not have the window pop to the front and demand all and any attention just because I happened to interact with it. It makes me feel more in control and productive this way. Just thought I’d throw out a use case for it.

I understand that this is really not a windowing mode that should be on by default as its behaviour is probably very confusing to unexpecting users, but I am glad that it’s still available as a gconf key. Then again, there was a time at which this behaviour was gone for some time and I just had to patch metacity on every update. :-)

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