[Ipe-discuss] prevent transients from grabbing focus

[Mandar Mitra]

Otfried Cheong via Ipe-discuss wrote (Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 06:55:42PM +0100):
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2021, at 19:07, Mandar Mitra via Ipe-discuss wrote:
> > When editing text / paragraphs in ipe, I use emacsclient as my editor. 
> > Ipe pops up a little transient window that says "Waiting for external 
> > editor" when going from ipe to emacs. On the way back, it pops up 
> > another transient that says "Compiling LaTeX". These transients grab 
> > the focus during their brief lifetimes, and I have to manually give 
> > back focus to either the ipe or the emacs window.
> > 
> > I'm sure I need to fix some setting in my window manager, but I'm 
> > wondering if I can disable the transients from within ipe as a quick 
> > fix.
> 
> The transient windows are essential - they guarantee that the Ipe event loop can keep running while the external program is running.
> 
> Are you on Linux?   Do you use `prefs.editor_closes_dialog` ?

Yes, Mint 19, to be precise; and yes I have

prefs.editor_closes_dialog = true

in iperc.lua.


> The other direction is trickier and is quite specific to Emacs:  Since Emacs does not terminate when you are finished editing the text, Ipe does not become the active window again.  This has actually nothing to do with the transient window (try calling emacsclient from a terminal - the terminal does not receive keyboard focus back when Emacs is done editing).    What exactly would you expect (or want) to happen?    Would you want the "Edit text" dialog to be the active window again?

This is definitely an issue with my window manager (fvwm). 

While the "Compiling LaTeX" popup appears/disappears, my mouse pointer remains on the emacs window, since I used key strokes to end the emacsclient session. After the popup is gone, none of the windows have focus, even though I have a "focus follows mouse" setting. 

On second thoughts, this is not really a problem, only mildly visually disconcerting, because I usually use the mouse or Alt-Tab to move focus back from emacs to the ipe window anyway.

I had also asked about this on the fvwm list. I'll forward one of the responses to you off-list, since it appears to be ipe-specific.

Thanks!
-mandar