Re: Consistent theme across the desktop [Re: Abysmal state of GTK build]

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2022 06:44:50 +0200
> From: <tomas@tuxteam.de>
> 
> One strong evidence is application-side decorations. Yes, the toolkit
> is supposed to take care of that. But the temptation for application
> developers is enormous to "know better" here and there.

I indeed question the optimistic belief that system-wide conventions
are always better.  They might be in some basic stuff, like the outer
decorations of the GUI windows, but other than that...

> Currently I have the "pleasure" of working with Windows for a first
> time in a long while, and the situation is dire.
> 
> Some applications (typically "old" ones, like the terminal) need a
> click to get focus, that first click doesn't do anything else.

Jist FYI: that's configurable, if you want to change it (I don't).

> Other
> applications do something on the first click right away (the browser
> selects the URL if you happen to click on the right place; some browser
> "apps" do even much more -- one chat app I "have to use" puts you in
> some answer mode).

The solution, of course, is to always click only on the window
decorations, not inside the client area.  Then all the applications
will behave the same, because it isn't the app, it's the window
manager's behavior.

Alternatively, configure Windows to auto-focus a window when the mouse
pointer is over it for some predefined minimum time.  That's what I
do, and I never needed to look back.  (You can also auto-raise the
window at that time, but I don't: the whole point is to be able to
type into a window that is not on top.)