Re: Emacs yanking my frames all over the desktop

[Michael Ekstrand <michael@elehack.net>]

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

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