fyfsp - fuck you focus stealing prevention
This is a service you can run to babysit your X11 window manager and put the window focus back on the window under the mouse whenever the window manager steals it or lets another window steal it.
If you're on Ubuntu trusty with upstart and you want to inflict this on all new sessions, do this:
git clone https://github.com/jettero/fyfsp
cd fyfsp
./ubuntu-system-install.shIf you just want it for you, probably the most rational choice on a multi-user system, then you'd do this instead:
[ -f configure ] || ./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make install
cp upstart.conf ~/.config/upstart
start fyfspActually, if you don't have upstart, but you do have broken focus stealing prevention, you can probably just run the thing from your .xsessionrc.
~/bin/fyfsp & # doesn't have a daemon modeIt listens to X11 events. When the focus changes and the window types aren't special or related to the various toolbars and docks and things, then the focus is returned to the window under the mouse.
Set your window manager to do the normal xmouse things. Do not enable focus stealing prevention, it's broken (see "WHAT THE HELL?" below).
Back in 1998, I was the happiest X11 user in the world. I was using AfterStep and I laughed at all the nincompoops using Windows 95 and Windows 98. “Hahaha, I'm a superior Loonix Nerd” I'd tell them.
I don't think I could go back to AfterStep — don't get me wrong. I love my Ubuntu/Unity/Compiz setup. … except for one thing. It's been 2014-1998=16 years, give or take, and I'm still not over it. I like focus follows mouse.
I don't like sloppy mouse, and I sure as hell don't like click-to-focus. I can use it when push comes to shove. I spend an awful lot of time in Windows (for the games and for the billing system at work, etc) but I don't like it.
So this gives me pure white hot rage and I can't move past it. Yes, Compiz has a general setting for “focus stealing prevention.” But it doesn't work. It does NOT work. I'm prepared to tell you why, but first, this is the basic workflow I'm not willing to live without.
1. Build a sweet document nobody will ever read
2. Render it in evince or whatever
3. Leave this window open
4. Rebuild the doc from the commandline
5. Evince will update the document view including the current page that was
carefully selected.
6. Evince will now steal focus — what an asshole. Now I have to
use the mouse.And again, here's the workflow, but a difference process.
1. Design some complicated algorithm for checking line of sight
or whatever
2. Test it with some graphical representation of the problem space
in image viewer du jour
3. Tweak design, render image
4. The image updates (or a new window pops up or whatever)
5. The new image steals focus and now I have to go use the mouse instead
of hitting up-arrow-enter or running a different test.It's really worse than the above. In the scenarios above, Compiz was already doing xfocus, but it has now broken xfocus by moving the focus somewhere else without the user wishing for this to happen — I know the user doesn't want this because the mouse is pointed where the focus is supposed to be, that's what xfocus is for.
Because Compiz broke the xfocus, I Now I have to move the mouse to some other window and back where I had it in the first place. This is fine once in a while, or maybe twice a day, but fifty or sixty times in a row during dev of some stupid idea that will never see the light of day? Now you're killing me.
AfterStep handled this correctly. Nothing stole my focus whether a window was created or not. Focus followed the mouse only and did not give a care in the world that the window was newly mapped or that it explicitly asked for focus — because that's not where my mouse was pointing. The other window didn't have any business having focus.
Yes it does. But it doesn't work. It does prevent focus stealing, but you can't actually use it in practice because it conflates focus with raise. So here's my workflow in Quartus with focus stealing prevention turned on.
1. Pop open a project in Quartus
2. Try to compile it – this can take a couple hours
3. Realize I forgot something
4. Cancel the build
5. ??? Why is this fucking window broken now? Goddamn it! ??
6. Oh, I see the problem, there's a modal dialog underneath the
fucking Quartus window.
“You wanna cancel build” [OK] [Cancel]In fact, every single new window, dialog, or widget will pop under everything else I'm doing no matter what. If you go source diving in Compiz core you'll find that it doesn't even attempt to stack the window if it's not allowed to steal focus.
I guess I see what they're doing. Sometimes a window might pop over what you're doing and you'll type in there by mistake. Clearly since focus stealing is an issue for the user, we should put every single new window at the bottom of the stack so they don't even know it's there and with no UI feedback of any kind so they're just left wondering why this new modal window (don't even get me started on modal windows) makes the application appear to have completely stopped working.
I hate this. It gives me pure white hot rage. These are my choices:
- Broken focus-follows-mouse
-
None of my beloved multi-window workflows can be made to work without using the mouse between every iteration of whatever I'm doing.
- Broken window management
-
None of my new windows appear where they should … the top of the window stack.
I've been living without working xfocus for a long time now. I took a break from normalcy for a while and ran Ratpoison for about a year. That was nice, but everything you do with browsers and the like is slow because it takes 2 or 3 keystrokes (with key combinations) to change windows; and in practice this slows me down more than broken xfocus. You do get used to Ratpoison, but it's also clumsy in other ways.
I don't want to live without xfocus anymore. I hate it. I'm angry at Gnome for breaking it. I'm angry with de Icaza for his war on user choice. I'm angry with the Metacity developers for conflating focus and raise in the first place. I'm just plain angry.
I'm well aware all of this anger is completely misplaced. I've come to terms with it. I think you should to. But in case you don't want to and you'd like your name added to the list of people angry with me, angry with this project, angry with the idea of xfocus, angry with my ideas, angry with the name of the project, or angry with the very notion of me as a person. Shoot me an email and I'll add you to the following list. I might even be willing to engage in some witty banter along the way — as much as I'm capable and time allows anyway.
FIXME: I'm sure we can get a list going herePaul Miller <paul+fyfsp@voltar.org>