Emacs yanking my frames all over the desktop

Emacs yanking my frames all over the desktop

[Michael Ekstrand]

I am running Emacs 23 (pretest on one machine, Debian snapshot packages
on another) with the GTK+ GUI under XFCE 4.4 and suffer from some rather
annoying behavior with regards to raising frames.

When a frame is raised, Emacs is not content to raise that frame to the
top and give it the focus if possible.  If the frame is on a different
virtual workspace from the one I am currently viewing, it moves the
frame to the current workspace.  When I have different frames for
(primarily) different purposes laid out on workspaces where I want them,
it is frustrating to have Emacs destroy that by moving them around.
I've fixed the primary context of the problem by telling ido to display
buffers in the active frame rather than their current frame if they're
already displayed, but sometimes it still comes up and bites me
occasionally if Emacs is a bit slow in responding and I flip to a
different desktop to look at something while it works and then decides
it needs to raise the frame.

Looking through customize and with apropos, I cannot find any variables
I can use to adjust this behavior.

Is there a way I can instruct Emacs to never move a frame from one
virtual desktop to another?  If it wants to raise a frame on a different
desktop, marking the frame as urgent (and possibly moving it to the top
on that desktop) and waiting until I return to the desktop it's on would
be ideal behavior.

Thanks,
- Michael

-- 
mouse, n: A device for pointing at the xterm in which you want to type.

Re: Emacs yanking my frames all over the desktop

[Joost Kremers]

Michael Ekstrand wrote:
> Is there a way I can instruct Emacs to never move a frame from one
> virtual desktop to another?

not emacs, you have to configure xfce to do that. in 4.4, however, there's
no way to do that through the gui. in the file
~/.config/xfce4/xfwm4/xfwm4rc you have to add the line:

activate_action=none

(alternatively, you can set it to 'bring', which will make xfce4 switch to
the virtual desktop the emacs frame that wants attention is on.)


-- 
Joost Kremers                                      joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

Re: Emacs yanking my frames all over the desktop

[Michael Ekstrand]

Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> writes:
> Michael Ekstrand wrote:
>> Is there a way I can instruct Emacs to never move a frame from one
>> virtual desktop to another?
>
> not emacs, you have to configure xfce to do that. in 4.4, however, there's
> no way to do that through the gui. in the file
> ~/.config/xfce4/xfwm4/xfwm4rc you have to add the line:
>
> activate_action=none

Thanks, that seems to fix it.

- Michael

-- 
mouse, n: A device for pointing at the xterm in which you want to type.
Confused by the strange files?  I cryptographically sign my messages.
For more information see <http://www.elehack.net/resources/gpg>.

Re: Emacs yanking my frames all over the desktop

[Tim X]

Michael Ekstrand <michael@elehack.net> writes:

> I am running Emacs 23 (pretest on one machine, Debian snapshot packages
> on another) with the GTK+ GUI under XFCE 4.4 and suffer from some rather
> annoying behavior with regards to raising frames.
>
> When a frame is raised, Emacs is not content to raise that frame to the
> top and give it the focus if possible.  If the frame is on a different
> virtual workspace from the one I am currently viewing, it moves the
> frame to the current workspace.  When I have different frames for
> (primarily) different purposes laid out on workspaces where I want them,
> it is frustrating to have Emacs destroy that by moving them around.
> I've fixed the primary context of the problem by telling ido to display
> buffers in the active frame rather than their current frame if they're
> already displayed, but sometimes it still comes up and bites me
> occasionally if Emacs is a bit slow in responding and I flip to a
> different desktop to look at something while it works and then decides
> it needs to raise the frame.
>
> Looking through customize and with apropos, I cannot find any variables
> I can use to adjust this behavior.
>
> Is there a way I can instruct Emacs to never move a frame from one
> virtual desktop to another?  If it wants to raise a frame on a different
> desktop, marking the frame as urgent (and possibly moving it to the top
> on that desktop) and waiting until I return to the desktop it's on would
> be ideal behavior.
>
> Thanks,
> - Michael

I suspect that this may be a window manager issue rather than an emacs
one - emacs doesn't know anything about virtual desktops or
windows. Window/frame placement is usually the role of the window
manager. 

Not sure why you would see the strange behavior with a GTK version and
not the old version, unless its something 'odd' in the way GTK
passes/communicates information to the window manager. 

What window manager are you running?

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: Emacs yanking my frames all over the desktop

[Michael Ekstrand]

Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:
> Michael Ekstrand <michael@elehack.net> writes:
>> I am running Emacs 23 (pretest on one machine, Debian snapshot packages
>> on another) with the GTK+ GUI under XFCE 4.4 and suffer from some rather
>> annoying behavior with regards to raising frames.
>>
>> When a frame is raised, Emacs is not content to raise that frame to the
>> top and give it the focus if possible.  If the frame is on a different
>> virtual workspace from the one I am currently viewing, it moves the
>> frame to the current workspace.  When I have different frames for
>> (primarily) different purposes laid out on workspaces where I want them,
>> it is frustrating to have Emacs destroy that by moving them around.
>> I've fixed the primary context of the problem by telling ido to display
>> buffers in the active frame rather than their current frame if they're
>> already displayed, but sometimes it still comes up and bites me
>> occasionally if Emacs is a bit slow in responding and I flip to a
>> different desktop to look at something while it works and then decides
>> it needs to raise the frame.
>>
>> Looking through customize and with apropos, I cannot find any variables
>> I can use to adjust this behavior.
>>
>> Is there a way I can instruct Emacs to never move a frame from one
>> virtual desktop to another?  If it wants to raise a frame on a different
>> desktop, marking the frame as urgent (and possibly moving it to the top
>> on that desktop) and waiting until I return to the desktop it's on would
>> be ideal behavior.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> - Michael
>
> I suspect that this may be a window manager issue rather than an emacs
> one - emacs doesn't know anything about virtual desktops or
> windows. Window/frame placement is usually the role of the window
> manager. 
>
> Not sure why you would see the strange behavior with a GTK version and
> not the old version, unless its something 'odd' in the way GTK
> passes/communicates information to the window manager. 
>
> What window manager are you running?

xfwm4 (from Xfce 4.4).  I don't know that the problem is specific to the
GTK version; I was just trying to be complete in describing my
configuration in case it did matter (e.g., under GTK Emacs calls the
equivalent of gtk_window_raise_and_annoy_user()).

But, as Joost pointed out, it is an xfwm problem solvable with a hidden
knob.  Given that, I imagine that the traditional X11 Emacs would suffer
from the same problem.

- Michael

-- 
mouse, n: A device for pointing at the xterm in which you want to type.
Confused by the strange files?  I cryptographically sign my messages.
For more information see <http://www.elehack.net/resources/gpg>.