[Ipe-discuss] prevent transients from grabbing focus

[Otfried Cheong]

On Sun, Feb 14, 2021, at 20:02, Bläsius, Thomas (ITI) wrote:
> I can second that issue. I can also add that it is not specific to using
> emacs as external editor. Whenever Ipe runs LaTeX, the transient window
> appears and grabs the focus. The main problem with this: the shortcuts
> stop working for a moment, which makes it so I often have a different
> tool selected than I want, as the transient window gobbled my keyboard
> input.
> 
> The workaround for me is to disable automatically running latex (which
> is of course not ideal).
> 
> I am also pretty sure that this issue started in the last year or two,
> but I unfortunately can't tell with which Ipe version it started.

I don't think this is really the same issue:

Starting in Ipe 7.2.18,  Ipe no longer freezes when you run Latex - instead, the small modal dialog shows up.   Keys pressed while the dialog is up will indeed be discarded.   I've played with this now, and can't get it to miss keys I press - but if you have slow latex runs, that could certainly happen.   Tikz is quite slow, so perhaps that's what you are using?

I have now introduced a new preference 'freeze_in_latex', which will revert to the old behaviour:  While Latex runs, the Ipe UI does not respond - but in exchange, any keys you press while the UI is frozen will be processed when Latex is done.

A complete solution to the problem would be to run Latex fully in the background  - but it seems like a lot of work to get this to work if users can update the document while Latex is running.

Cheers,
  Otfried