Re: raise-frame doesn't work in Fedora Core 4

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> Is there some documented rationale for this wm-spec thingy?
>> I mean, why on earth should the window-manager need more than "XRaiseWindow"
>> to figure out that the window should be brought on top?

> Activate doesn't have to mean raise.  It usually mean uniconify, focus and
> possibly raise if the WM manager wants it.  If you have several workspaces,
> you can have different active windows in each one of them.  Here is the
> (very brief) rationale from freedesktop:

>   Rationale: XSetInputFocus is not sufficient, since the window may be
>   hidden on another virtual desktop ( in that case XSetInputFocus
>   fails with a BadWindow error )

> But I'm not sure exactly why this is needed.

I don't understand: AFAICT the OP's problem is that `raise-frame' does not
actually raise the frame.  But `raise-frame' calls XRaiseWindow, which seems
like it should raise the frame, don't you think?
XSetInputFocus seems unrelated (especially since `raise-frame' doesn't call
it AFAIK).

In other words, to me it seems that if `raise-frame' requires this
_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW footwork to work, it's a bug either in the WM or in the
wm-spec: `XRaiseWindow' should do just what it says, i.e. raise the window.
But maybe there's a rationale for this, so it's just a misfeature needed for
some odd reason.  In that case I'd be interested to hear what's the reason
(and if the reason has to do with input-focus, I'll need more info to
understand what's the relationship with raise-frame).


        Stefan