Evening

[lnr]

Straight to class, by a route which seemed to involve as many hills as possible (Castle Hill to get to Histon Road, then up the slope to the roundabout over the A14, then uphill over the railway line the other side). Lost 1lb this week, which is the one I put on last week. Mildly frustrating, but I haven't been perfect, even though it's been pretty hard work. Too many meals on the move really. Shall try to be good this week other than dinner tomorrow and Saturday's fun. Don't need to eat at the pub on Thursday even if I'm there most of the evening, can grab something sin free before I arrive or something. I think I'm going to allow myself 5-10 sins a day on the other 5 days of the week though, cos otherwise it just gets too hard.

Can't update graphs since all the data is over there -> not currently attached to a working machine. Dabs have shipped the bits, but still can't be more accurate than 1-3 days for when they'll arrive. Oh and I sent Em's birthday present: silly me had forgotten she's staying with my mum and dad this week anyway, so I didn't need to remember her address in Newcastle after all. Spent a pleasant evening quietly geeking in a halfway decent environment again, though the keyboard mapping is somewhat b0rken. @"# are all hard to get right, Played some more gridlock, had a nice stirfry for dinner. Rjk's been off watching pirates (Arrr!) again, which is why I've been able to borrow his computer. Took me a while to find the right runes to startx to make it use a different display (startx -- :1): Richard told me them the other day but I didn't write it down. Odd using a different window manager. Who on earth thinks click-to-focus is a sensible default? I guess this is what we get for trying to be windowsey.

Think I'm going to produce fruit salad of some description now and then go to bed with more of The Scar. Nice and cool this evening so maybe I'll get some sleep.

Comments

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

Who on earth thinks click-to-focus is a sensible default?

Me. I like to bring the focus to a window, and then just *shove* the mouse-cursor out of harms way. Otherwise I'd have to carefully position it somewhere where I'd still have focus in the correct window but the cursor someplace it doesn't obscure what I'm doing.
(Oddly enough, I also don't like moving between virtual screens with the mouse ;) )

[reddragdiva]

I second this. (Although moving between screens with the mouse is nice.)

[lnr]

But there are other ways to do that. Focus changing only on entering a new window for example (so you can move it to an empty bit of screen). Or having the mouse cursor disappear when you're typing in a terminal. I usually have focus set to the former, and it was a nice surprise to find the setup I was using on Richard's computer automatically doing the latter.

But to be honest I don't think it's weird if people *want* to have click-to-focus, I just think it's a strange default. And particularly annoying if it means you can't put the focus in a window without bringing it to the front, as seemed to be the default state.

[simont]

"(so you can move it to an empty bit of screen)"

I think you've just highlighted the reason why some people don't like this mode of use. It may work for you, and it works for me too, but I suspect that's because we both typically have an empty bit of screen visible somewhere. This is not true of all GUI users by any means :-)

[imc.livejournal.com]

Who on earth thinks click-to-focus is a sensible default?

Lots of (severely misguided) people do! But it is possible to change it in GNOME/KDE if you know where to look (which I don't, since I don't have one in front of me at this minute: fvwm rules!).

It does seem to be what computer vendors think is the easiest to understand, though. Obviously it's what Windows does (also OS/2 and - I think - Mac OS). It's also what OpenWindows and CDE do by default.

I don't generally find it to be a problem to need the mouse pointer somewhere within the current window, but one can always move it to the titlebar where it won't be in the way. Also, `Sloppy Focus' allows you to move it out of the window into the background (as long as you don't touch another window on the way out).

What I personally want, though, is `Focus Follows Eyes.'

[lnr]

Oh I found it pretty quickly, and set it to sloppy focus since that's my favourite too.

Focus follows eyes would be mildly disconcerting when copy typing while watching your paper copy. What if there's another window on the route between your paper and the one you're typing in?

[imc.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I suspect what I really mean is `Focus Follows Brain.'

[sweh.livejournal.com]

I like click to focus and have had it in my X configuration since 1992 (when I started using fvwm 1.x). What I hate is "focus brings to foreground". I sometimes like having the window I'm interacting with behind another window (eg a large window with vi in it that I'm typing into, and a smaller window overlapping in front of it with some information I am using).

Click to focus: good
Auto raise: bad

Works for me :-)