Change Window focus mode

Hi.

I’m a new user of RiscOS, and the most disturbing usage of Risc OS is that a window do not come to the foreground when you click on it.
To not change the compatibility with the historic usage of Risc OS, it could be an option of the OS (in a kind of OS working form)

When checked, the first click on a window (everywhere) could give the focus to the window and put it on the top. It could change many things for new user coming from other OS !

I’ve used RISCOS since day 1 and this has always bugged me! If you have lots of windows open, as I invariably do whilst programming, switching just the focus to a window that’s 99% obscured is very irritating.

The other irritating feature that I’d like to toggle off, is software that takes focus when the mouse is over one of it’s windows. The amount of times I’ve been typing and nudged the mouse, only to notice the focus has changed. Aargh!

It’s interesting to see a different viewpoint.
I say different because the OS feature of not jumping to the front when the window interior is clicked but coming to the front when the window framing elements are clicked is a deliberate design feature and one that many long term RO users prefer to the Win/Lin PeeCee behaviour of focus and front being inextricably linked.
For a regular Win/Lin PeeCee user it’s different and possibly disconcerting.

For me it’s irritating in the amount of effort I have to put in, on WinPC stuff that always brings the focus window to the front, to get things to take input while I have another large window open with relevant source content. Almost as irritating as Windows not scrolling windows backward when I use the right hand mouse key.

I don’t recall the name of the module but there was something produced that modified this behaviour so that holding something like ctrl or alt while clicking brought things forward. For the Filer view windows the switching is available via TAB and SH-TAB.

The other irritating feature that I’d like to toggle off, is software that takes focus when the mouse is over one of it’s windows.

Pretty sure that’s not Style Guide behaviour.

No, No, No. One of the best features of Riscos is that it doesn’t do this. If you want the window to come to the top then click somewhere on the window furniture. RiscOS has the ‘send to back’ button to help with this.

No, No, No. One of the best features of Riscos is that it doesn’t do this.

There you go, the first (other) voice in favour of the GUI not behaving like Windows. I’m there will be more.

I am very much with Steve on this. RISC OS gives you the ability to drag one window behind another (try SHIFT drag), which is what you want to tidy a cluttered desktop. The Windows behaviour that has windows jumping to the top and obscuring your view of what you are reading while you type is infuriating. After all the whole point of a desktop is to be able to have many windows open with information to read while you enter stuff in another. With Windows it is as if somebody let a howling draught into the room.

I have Raspbian Stretch on my other Raspberry Pi 3. Eventually I discovered how to modify its window manager so that with it too one can drag windows behind other windows.

The sorry individual that changes RISC OS to pop windows to the top like Windows (etc) do it will be the one who meets me on a dark and stormy night with a cleaver in my hand doing a good Reina Ryūgū impression.

Seriously, that and the new-app-must-pathologically-open-a-window are the two things I hate most about non-RISC OS systems. Even more than broken scrollbars, broken draggy-droppy, and broken menus…

Just DON’T.

The amount of times I’ve been typing and nudged the mouse, only to notice the focus has changed. Aargh!

Check what junk you have running at startup because I have never ever experienced this.
I dimly recall a module that would do such a thing, but I think the idea is horrendous – the only entity to change focus should be the user, unless the focus is changed due to some sort of error condition that would be a complete show stopper if not dealt with. Admittedly it’s a little harder on RISC OS because of how Wimp_WindowAlert works, but “WiFi connection lost” and “battery at 5%, shut down NOW” are a whole different category to “download complete”… The first two can interrupt you, the latter should be a benign notification at best, never a focus stealer.

I have to say that I disagree with the “don’t do this” calls. The behaviour is, as Steve says, disconcerting when coming from Windows or similar platforms. I see no harm in having an option, although I’d be perfectly fine with it being a third-party module rather than something in the actual OS. “Option” is the key word though!

@ Etienne,

Get in touch with me at rondotbriscoe@blueyonderdotcodotuk (change dot to .)
and I will provide you with a link to a third party module that does what you want.

Regards Ron.

The behaviour is, as Steve says, disconcerting when coming from Windows or similar platforms.

Of course. Good forbid anybody “think different”. ;-)

Shall we change menu behaviour to, because surely the lack of always-there menus will be disconcerting…?

Yeah, okay, it’s a flippant response, but the fact that RISC OS doesn’t do that is one of the things I like about it, and clearly I’m not alone. There are things more important that need attention than trying to ape behaviours of other systems (even as an option).

That said, a third party module isn’t part of the OS so that’s fine… ;-)

I agree completely!

Coming from Windows – you want better, surely!

You want to be in control, surely; you decide what window should be on top, which window should be where on the screen!

I was going to say more, but why bother – if you’re so fixated on how Windows does it, just use Windows!

I don’t: Ever!

If you have lots of windows open, as I invariably do whilst programming, switching just the focus to a window that’s 99% obscured is very irritating.

If these happen to be StrongED windows then you can give focus and front the window at the same time by Ctrl-Adjust clicking inside it.

That said, a third party module isn’t part of the OS so that’s fine… ;-)

There’s no need for a module, this simple bit of BASIC should do it.

REM > FrontFocus

DIM Block% 256 : OldFocus% = -1 : QuitTask% = FALSE
SYS "Wimp_Initialise",400,&4B534154,"FrontFocus",0

REPEAT
  SYS "OS_ReadMonotonicTime" TO Time%
  SYS "Wimp_PollIdle",0,Block%,Time%+20,0 TO Reason%
  CASE Reason% OF
    WHEN 0 : REM NullEvent
      SYS "Wimp_GetCaretPosition",,Block%
      NewFocus% = Block%!0 : REM remember window with focus
      IF (NewFocus% <> -1) AND (NewFocus% <> OldFocus%) THEN
        REM if it's a child window then we should front the parent
        SYS "Wimp_GetWindowState",,Block%,&4B534154 TO ,,,Parent%
        IF (Parent% <> -1) THEN Block%!0 = Parent%
        SYS "Wimp_GetWindowState",,Block%
        IF (Block%!28 <> -1) THEN
          Block%!28 = -1 : REM force window to front
          SYS "Wimp_SendMessage",2,Block%,Block%!0,-1
        ENDIF
      ENDIF
      OldFocus% = NewFocus%
    WHEN 17,18 : REM UserMessage
      IF Block%!16 = 0 THEN QuitTask% = TRUE
  ENDCASE
UNTIL (QuitTask%)

SYS "Wimp_CloseDown"
END

Against tradition the above has ever so slightly been tested, with the emphasis on slightly. :-)

RISC OS set in stone now?

For you zealots information, AltClick was 32bitted by Druck in 2002 and was originally written by David Walker in 1996.Seems to be of some use to quite a few RISC OS users over the years.

I use RISC OS because it allows me to set it up the way I want and I would not deny other users the right to do the same. Oh and I don’t use AltClick myself ;-).

Regards Ron.

For you zealots information, AltClick was 32bitted by Druck in 2002 and was originally written by David Walker in 1996.Seems to be of some use to quite a few RISC OS users over the years.

That’s the one I was thinking of. Alt and click is sufficiently non-standard that it doesn’t get in the way of standard RO user actions so even “zealots” won’t mind.

The purpose was not to change the focus mode but to add an option to do it.

- That do not change anything for those who don’t want to change.
- That’s can make a big difference for those who come for other OS.

Many people speaks about windows, but this is how OSX works too, and most linux desktop I guess !

All these OS have a filer that displays a folder tree on the left and a file list on the right (or something similar), which avoids opening hundreds of folders.
This can be a altenative solution too.

This is just the point of view of a new user !

You can get something partially similar to a tree view by using the “Full info” view and double-right-clicking on directories to open them in the same window (and right-clicking on Close to go back up a level).

The visual metaphor of objects in a window for a hierarchical filing system is one we are all used to. But I would like to suggest that it is not always appropriate. If you have a directory of very similar objects, say fonts for example, named numerically, then the windows metaphor is not much use – a rolodex would be more appropriate. Often we use directories to provide a recognizable environment, consisting of diverse items all relevant to some common theme (building software, storing stuff received as email attachments, images for a document, etc); in which case it is the recognizability which is important. It would be nice to have some 3D picture, with perspective to reflect datestamps and colours for different themes, in such cases. In any case I do not think we should treat either trees or windows as the only possibilities for depicting file systems in a GUI. It is disappointing that there has not been more imagination and experimentation in the field of GUIs. Most of the GUIs that I have seen for Linux have been woefully unimaginative, driven more by the need to cater to Windows users than by thinking about what might actually be convenient.

The purpose was not to change the focus mode but to add an option to do it.

My point there being that with our limited developer resources, there are many things more deserving than to break RISC OS to confirm to a peculiar behaviour typically seen elsewhere. That other systems make it hard to put the focus to a non-top window is a limitation, not a feature. Example? Me watching Eurovision, making notes as it goes along. I need to find the TV app setting to force it to be the top window always, or Notepad++ will keep trying to pop over it… Stupid.

say fonts for example, named numerically, then the windows metaphor is not much use

Nobody’s metaphor is much use there. The main thing you’re likely to want to do when looking at a don’t directory is see what the font in question actually is. Is there an app for RISC OS that can open an example window?

I used to use !Chars to remind myself what a font looks like – font names are usually little help. For some reason, buried in history no doubt, fonts always seem to have their own filing system. You cannot put a font just anywhere you want, it has to go in !Boot.Resources.!Fonts; or rather the position has to be recorded by a dedicated system variable. Using TeX on RISC OS systems is complicated by the differences between TeX and RISC OS as to what fonts are supposed to be. I suppose the truth is that most files/resources have multiple owners and multiple uses. Does it go where the user wants to put it, where the system wants it (i.e. the OS-designer), where the package manager wants to put it? Unix often uses soft links to resolve such issues. A bit like lending libraries, you need a marker to put in the book’s place on the shelf saying the book that should be here, Soft Intangibles, ref. 1234567, is currently being borrowed by Ada Lovelace, ref. abcdef.

You cannot put a font just anywhere you want, it has to go in Fonts; or rather the position has to be recorded by a dedicated system variable.

There lies an interesting problem. Normally fonts are a system-wide resource, but there are times when a font is specific to an application with no real relevance outside of that application. Some examples are the cross-stitch designer from ISV, a program of my own (in creation), and – IIRC – the TrueANSI editor.
This leaves you with needing to either pollute !Fonts, or mess around with InstallFont/RemoveFont to point to a local copy (and if doing it properly, check the available fonts first in case the user put it into !Fonts).
It’s a shame there’s no path option to Font_FindFont to cater for using special fonts that may be somewhere other than !Fonts…

I would recommend the “Mauser” module which uses left+middle click anywhere on a window to bring it to front. It has the additional benefit of also allowing to move the window at the same time with left+middle drag. And of course you can use right+middle drag to move it without changing its position in the window stack.

It’s a shame there’s no path option to Font_FindFont to cater for using special fonts that may be somewhere other than !Fonts…

But you can use *FontLibrary to temporarily use other fonts, and there is also *FontInstall.

One thing I do like about the Mac OS filer is the ability to splatter the window stack across the desktop, click the window you want at the top then have the others return to their hierarchy.

All these OS have a filer that displays a folder tree on the left and a file list on the right (or something similar), which avoids opening hundreds of folders.

Useful at times but a real pain if you want several filer windows open at the same time for comparison and drag and drop. Filers on Windows and Linux waste lots of desktop space by opening at a fixed size regardless of the number of files in the directory.