Subject: more unclutter problems

From: Danek Duvall <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:15:37 -0700

I finally got around to upgrading fvwm to 2.4.0 today, and I'm noticing a
problem related to unclutter whose symptoms don't seem to have anything to
do with the ones reported over the past few months.

Basically, what I'm seeing is that when unclutter tries to hide the
pointer, it just flickers rapidly.  It looks like it's exchanging focus
with the root window, since I can then press a key combo only valid on the
root window and the corresponding action will happen (like a root menu
posting).

This only seems to happen with a few apps -- xv and xmms are the two I've
discovered so far -- xterm, netscape, xload, and xbuffy all seem to "let"
unclutter do its job just fine.

Has anyone else noticed this?

I can try to pare down my .fvwmrc to make sure it isn't anything strange; I
just wanted to check to see if anyone has noticed it (or if it's already
fixed in CVS).  I hadn't noticed anyone talking about it recently.

I'm attaching the xev output of one of these events, control-C'ed after a
little while, in case it clarifies anything.

Thanks,
Danek

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:30:45 +0200

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 07:15:37PM -0700, Danek Duvall wrote:
> pointer, it just flickers rapidly.

Works fine for me with all the applications mentioned below.  Did
you use any options to start unclutter?

> It looks like it's exchanging focus with the root window,

That's impossible.

> since I can then press a key combo only valid on the

This simply means that fvwm does not know the window that received
the click. 

> little while, in case it clarifies anything.

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

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---

From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:25:52 -0400

> Has anyone else noticed this?

I can reproduce the flickering pointer using xv, unclutter, Exceed, and
an empty .fvwm2rc.

I don't normally use unclutter with Exceed, but I notice that unclutter
doesn't hide the pointer when the pointer is on the root.

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---

From: "Paul D. Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 Jul 2001 11:19:48 -0400

I get it, also, using FVWM with Gnome and X 4.0.3 on a Debian GNU/Linux
(intel) box.

It happens in some of the Gnome apps.  In fact, it even flickers in an
FvwmForm dialog!

It doesn't happen for all apps, though: things like Emacs, Netscape,
xterm, rxvt, etc. all work fine.

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From: Danek Duvall <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:46:06 -0700

> doesn't hide the pointer when the pointer is on the root.

I see that behavior, too, though I don't use Exceed.  For completeness, I'm
running XFree86 4.1.0, using the VESA driver, but I also see it at work on
Solaris.  Otherwise I might just blame it on my X server at home, which has
been doing funny things lately ...

Danek

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:27:13 +0200

> been doing funny things lately ...

I think it would be more correct to blame it on unclutter.  I had
a look at the code and it is one big hack, tuned to work with
most window managers and applications.  It still has some
limitations that make it fail or break things if other software
is written in a certain way.

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

---

From: Danek Duvall <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:08:58 -0700

On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 10:27:13AM +0200, Fvwm Workers wrote:

> I think it would be more correct to blame it on unclutter.  I had a look
> at the code and it is one big hack,

I won't disagree.  Sadly, I don't know enough X to even know where to begin
making it better.

I noticed that adding -noevents makes it work ok.  That flag makes
unclutter send a pseudo EnterNotify to the parent window "to try to
convince applications that we didn't really leave it".  The author uses
emacs as the primary example of an app that needs this.  Since I don't use
emacs, this ends up being a reasonable workaround for me.

But I don't at all understand why that would be necessary, or what the
interaction is between unclutter and fvwm that's making unclutter screw up
so badly.  Can anyone explain that?

Many thanks,
Danek

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 18:55:34 +0200

> so badly.  Can anyone explain that?

When unclutter hides the pointer, it creates another window that
is a subwindow of the window that currently contains the pointer.
Then, unclutter waits for a number of events to arrive and destroys
its sub window when it gets one.  One of these events is -
unfortunately - FocusOut.  But some applications (including fvwm)
want to manage the focus of their own, just taking away the focus
from the unclutter sub window under certain circumstances as soon
as it takes focus.

In this case, if any window is entered while a MouseFocus window
has the focus, fvwm deletes the focus causing the FocusOut.  It
may work to not delete the focus if the pointer generally stays
in the same frame.  That should help with the problem at hand,
but it may fail if the pointer is over a sub window of the client
window.

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

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