Conference bulova::decw_jan-89_to_nov-90

I don't know about easier on the eyes, but it'd certainly be easier on my
nerves (and temper!).  Somehow, I miss noticing that the window I'm looking at
doesn't have an highlighted banner, and all my commands and text go to another
window altogether - with sometimes less than nominal results.

So, yah - I'd like to be able to do this if I wanted.

#ken	:-)}

    I second the motion.  Does this hereby constitute a groundswell of
    public opinion?
    

    Hi Mike,
    
    	please QAR it as a suggestion. A popular one at that!
    
    Andy

    > please QAR it as a suggestion. A popular one at that!
    
    How does one QAR the OSF Motif Style Guide?
    
    Regards,
    
    Marios

    You suggest the change to Engineering who, if they think such a change
    has any merit, may suggest it to OSF.
    
    ANdy

Color Schmolor!

I want the text to go where I'm looking.

Wouldn't THAT be some human engineering!

>>I want the text to go where I'm looking.
>>
>>Wouldn't THAT be some human engineering!

Actually, my VT240 works just that way! :)

-steve-

I don't care much for this idea, but so long as it's optional, that's fine.
You might try tinkering with the highlight color.  I have my normal
window banners come up MidnightBlue, but the highlighted one is YellowGreen.
That's a nice bright color, and it's very hard to miss...

	paul

    
    Re .8
    
    Sorry, Paul, not necessarily so.  I've tried it.  No matter how
    glaringly bright I make the banner I still tend not to see it.  I agree
    with you, however, that changing background color on focus change ought
    to be optional.
    
    - Claude

My opinion is that the window manager should keep its grubby little hands off my
windows and confine its activities to its own decorations.

It **definitely** ought to be optional, if it's implemented at all!  If all you
have in your window is text, the suggestion makes sense, but if the window is
displaying graphics, particularly if it's displaying multi-color graphics,
things could wind up looking very bad indeed.

--PSW

  I agree with everyone who feels it should be optional (maybe not even
  the default behavior), especially for the reasons given in .-1
  (graphic windows). 

  Technical point: it could be very difficult to implement this in the
  Window Manager (where the banner is handled), because the background
  of many (most?) windows is owned by the application, not by the Window
  Manager. A likely way to implement it would be for each application to
  change the color on gain/lose focus events, just as applications now
  perform certain operations on these and expose events (such as
  redrawing text and graphics, etc). Certainly more work for application
  developers (and would need to be in the Style Guide), but would also
  mean that an application could choose not to implement it (such as for
  windows displaying graphics).

  Re recommendation to QAR it as a suggestion: will do. Thanks Andy.

    How about just a reasonably human option like...
    
    1. Foreground window always has focus, or
    
    2. No matter WHERE in the window I click, it comes to the foreground
    AND gets focus.
    
    THE SINGLE MOST FRUSTRATING (AND DANGEROUS) THING IN DECwindows!
    
    Gary

    As I believe I already said, for (2) use Autofocus, available from
    ELKTRA::DW_EXAMPLES I believe.
    
    - ���

    re: .13
    
    Last I saw, Autofocus was unsupported and buggy.
    
    What I meant (it looks a bit ambiguous to me now) was that if I click
    anywhere on a window, I want it to come front and get focus.  Now, the
    menu bar and vertical scroll bar do the former, but not the latter. 
    That is VERY misleading and dangerous if you are moving along at a
    reasonably fast clip.
    
    Gary

    Well, it works for me and has done for ages.
    
    - ���

    Then perhaps you're a little more deft than the rest of us, Andy.
    
    I agree with Gary that it's damned frustrating that clicking on the
    menu bar of a window pops it to the top, drops the menu, but does *not*
    assign focus. I type things into the wrong window two or three times a
    day because of it. Usually it's not problem, but it's damned
    frustrating when I type a ^Z into one editing window when I wanted to
    type it into another.
    
    	Jon

	I use this as a feature; I often click on the menu bar of
	a window (in a blank part of the bar) to bring that window
	to the top without it taking focus.  I was annoyed last
	week when a mail window started taking focus from those
	clicks, but I just restarted mail to "fix" it.

	After all, aren't bringing to the front and assigning
	input focus two different operations that one should be
	able to do separately?

	Dan

re .12

 >   How about just a reasonably human option like...
    
 >  1. Foreground window always has focus, or
    
 >  2. No matter WHERE in the window I click, it comes to the foreground
 >  AND gets focus.
    
 >  THE SINGLE MOST FRUSTRATING (AND DANGEROUS) THING IN DECwindows!
    
 >  Gary


Motif solves this problem gracefully.  Look at SUBWAY::Motif for the latest
word on Motif availability.


Kris..

Re .17: Yes.  Absolutely.

Clicking on the menu bar is a kludgy workaround for the fact that there
doesn't seem to be an intuitively obvious way to pop a window to the top
without giving it focus.  This is a commonly needed operation.

(Similarly, there isn't a common way to give a window focus without popping
it.  In a few applications shift-MB1 does the job, but only in a few.)

	paul

In DECwindows V2, MB3 on the title bar will pop the window without assigning
input focus.  This is in the release notes (which is how I discovered it).

	/dave (a weirdo who always Rs the FN just for the fun of it, and as
		a result often answers questions that mystify most others)

Even on V1, you can make the windows "sticky" by shift-clicking on the
"push" icon.  After you do that (and the icon changes to partly shaded)
you can now click on the window to give it focus without popping.  If you
click on what used to be the push icon, you will see that it is now a pop
icon.

Burns

.21: (nit/clarification mode)

It's not a "pop" icon, it's a "toggle" icon... if any part of the (shell) window
is occluded, the sticky "toggle" will bring it to the front.  If it's not at all
occluded, it'll push the window to the back.

	/dave

    	The Sapphire window manager that ran under Accent (an MSG based
    operating system, of course) let one operate on windows by pressing
    buttons when the pointer was over an icon.

    	The semantics were something like

    	MB1: Toggle Window visible
    	MB2: Bring to top of stack
    	MB3: Show outline of window -- flashed the outline of the window,
    the icon, and lines connecting the corners of the icon and the corners
    of the window.
    	MB4: Push to bottom of stack (if a forth button was available).

    	BTW: The icons could have linear progress bars, (recursive progress
    bars, or random progress bars) attention marks, etc.

    	It was nice to use, even though the hardware was, uh, slow.

    		just reminiscing
    
    
    		Paul Komar.