1:55 a.m.
Hi All,
I see a nice healthy discussion on these DEs - please can someone with
actual experience give me some guidance.
As an Ububtu user, I am following this list because F17 will have
"native" multiseat support.
My staff run 1 (and only 1) application in Linux: A proprietary GIS
package, to do spatial data capture. Nothing else.
I've been using Ubuntu 6.06 only because multiseat was stable. I believe
that Gnome messed that up so lately I've been using single seat boxes
with Ubuntu 11.10, but the screen focus is annoyingly different. Yes I
have tried different "preference" settings.
So, my questions are:
Does XFCE work in multiseat mode (or must it too wait for the F17
drivers/methodology)
Which screen-focus methodology does XFCE use? (Like the older Gnome, or
the newer Gnome)
More on Screen Focus:
The GIS package is NOT a GUI package, but rather a bunch of commands you
can string together in BASH-syntax-like scripts that run within the
package. I make heavy usage of one command that allows you to position
the mouse somewhere on the graphics output screen, and then either
click, or touch a key on the keyboard. This command then returns "button
X Y" which you can trap, and then do further processing in your script.
In other words, I now have a 104-button mouse.
In the older Gnomes, when my script requested an input from the graphics
locator, the focus would automatically drop to the graphics window, so
touching the keyboard instead of clicking the mouse would send the
"keypressed-X-Y" to the mouse-input que, and not the keyboard buffer. On
the newer Gnomes, this is extremely erratic, and touching the keyboard
instead of clicking the mouse sometimes (and not always) puts that key
depression into the keyboard buffer (to create later havoc), but hangs
my script until the operator manually focusses to the graphic screen and
then does the mouse-point-key-depression "click".
Extremely annoying, so I was wondering if any of you had in-depth
knowledge of where this screen-focus issue might arise from, or whether
XFCE was suitable for multiseat configurations.
TIA,
Zoltan
--
===========================================
Zoltan Szecsei PrGISc [PGP0031]
Geograph (Pty) Ltd.
P.O. Box 7, Muizenberg 7950, South Africa.
65 Main Road, Muizenberg 7945
Western Cape, South Africa.
34° 6'16.35"S 18°28'5.62"E
Tel: +27-21-7884897 Mobile: +27-83-6004028
Fax: +27-86-6115323 www.geograph.co.za
===========================================
6:56 a.m.
Target window never fires up (in this case) - this thought is however
not relevant as it used to work 100% correctly on older Gnomes, hence my
request insinuating "focus strategy" type differences in the DEs
Actually I suspect its very relevant - if you've got timing dependancies
in your approach then you will get problems such as those you describe.
Alan
6:32 a.m.
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your thoughts.
Please see my comments interspersed with yours.
Regards,
Zoltan
On 2012/03/29 13:10, Alan Cox wrote:
> Does XFCE work in multiseat mode (or must it too wait for the
F17
> drivers/methodology)
I've run multiple XFCE sessions at once as *different* users on the same
box to different displays. That works - and to be honest - that ought to
work on any desktop.
Good. That's how I do it with (older) Gnome - by editing
xorg.conf and
creating extra sessions in gdm.conf-custom
Trying to do multiple as one user ends in tears.
not surprised :-)
> Which screen-focus methodology does XFCE use? (Like the older Gnome, or
> the newer Gnome)
If you mean the window focus policy - its configurable. Mind you most
things in xfce are 8)
errr... I did mention I did try these user accessible
settings (in
Gnome). I was looking for comments regarding strategy changes between
the older and newer Gnome, or between XFCE & Gnome.
> More on Screen Focus:
> The GIS package is NOT a GUI package, but rather a bunch of commands you
> can string together in BASH-syntax-like scripts that run within the
> package. I make heavy usage of one command that allows you to position
> the mouse somewhere on the graphics output screen, and then either
> click, or touch a key on the keyboard. This command then returns "button
> X Y" which you can trap, and then do further processing in your script.
> In other words, I now have a 104-button mouse.
Well sort of, but you are asking for problems if it's just using Xtest
hackery to do this. When you click on a window the focus processing takes
a moment of time and you really should be waiting for the target window
to become mapped before firing input at it.
Target window never fires up (in this
case) - this thought is however
not relevant as it used to work 100% correctly on older Gnomes, hence my
request insinuating "focus strategy" type differences in the DEs
> In the older Gnomes, when my script requested an input from the graphics
> locator, the focus would automatically drop to the graphics window, so
> touching the keyboard instead of clicking the mouse would send the
> "keypressed-X-Y" to the mouse-input que, and not the keyboard buffer. On
> the newer Gnomes, this is extremely erratic, and touching the keyboard
> instead of clicking the mouse sometimes (and not always) puts that key
> depression into the keyboard buffer (to create later havoc), but hangs
> my script until the operator manually focusses to the graphic screen and
> then does the mouse-point-key-depression "click".
>
> Extremely annoying, so I was wondering if any of you had in-depth
> knowledge of where this screen-focus issue might arise from
The relevant question is probably how those tools work and how they
should work. You can select a window to be focussed via the X protocol so
you can use command line tools in the script to set focus, at least
assuming the window manager isn't immediately overriding it as is likely
to occur in the non click-to-focus modes that Gnome favours. However
there are ways and means for that too.
This is a thought I never considered. Will
explore it.
If you are using Xfce then you can use "wmctrl" which may be what you
want to actually sort the focussing out. It may also work in Gnome 3.
You might also find Zenity worth looking at for some of this kind of work
where you are nailing GUI and scripts stuff together. It provides a shell
script interface to pop up all sorts of standard gtk dialogues, selectors
etc.
Nice thought - thanks.
Alan
--
===========================================
Zoltan Szecsei PrGISc [PGP0031]
Geograph (Pty) Ltd.
P.O. Box 7, Muizenberg 7950, South Africa.
65 Main Road, Muizenberg 7945
Western Cape, South Africa.
34° 6'16.35"S 18°28'5.62"E
Tel: +27-21-7884897 Mobile: +27-83-6004028
Fax: +27-86-6115323 www.geograph.co.za
===========================================
6:10 a.m.
Does XFCE work in multiseat mode (or must it too wait for the F17
drivers/methodology)
I've run multiple XFCE sessions at once as *different* users on the same
box to different displays. That works - and to be honest - that ought to
work on any desktop.
Trying to do multiple as one user ends in tears.
Which screen-focus methodology does XFCE use? (Like the older Gnome,
or
the newer Gnome)
If you mean the window focus policy - its configurable. Mind you most
things in xfce are 8)
More on Screen Focus:
The GIS package is NOT a GUI package, but rather a bunch of commands you
can string together in BASH-syntax-like scripts that run within the
package. I make heavy usage of one command that allows you to position
the mouse somewhere on the graphics output screen, and then either
click, or touch a key on the keyboard. This command then returns "button
X Y" which you can trap, and then do further processing in your script.
In other words, I now have a 104-button mouse.
Well sort of, but you are asking for problems if it's just using Xtest
hackery to do this. When you click on a window the focus processing takes
a moment of time and you really should be waiting for the target window
to become mapped before firing input at it.
In the older Gnomes, when my script requested an input from the
graphics
locator, the focus would automatically drop to the graphics window, so
touching the keyboard instead of clicking the mouse would send the
"keypressed-X-Y" to the mouse-input que, and not the keyboard buffer. On
the newer Gnomes, this is extremely erratic, and touching the keyboard
instead of clicking the mouse sometimes (and not always) puts that key
depression into the keyboard buffer (to create later havoc), but hangs
my script until the operator manually focusses to the graphic screen and
then does the mouse-point-key-depression "click".
Extremely annoying, so I was wondering if any of you had in-depth
knowledge of where this screen-focus issue might arise from
The relevant question is probably how those tools work and how they
should work. You can select a window to be focussed via the X protocol so
you can use command line tools in the script to set focus, at least
assuming the window manager isn't immediately overriding it as is likely
to occur in the non click-to-focus modes that Gnome favours. However
there are ways and means for that too.
If you are using Xfce then you can use "wmctrl" which may be what you
want to actually sort the focussing out. It may also work in Gnome 3.
You might also find Zenity worth looking at for some of this kind of work
where you are nailing GUI and scripts stuff together. It provides a shell
script interface to pop up all sorts of standard gtk dialogues, selectors
etc.
Alan
2:25 a.m.
On 2012/03/29 09:06, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 03/28/2012 11:55 PM, Zoltan Szecsei wrote:
>
> Does XFCE work in multiseat mode (or must it too wait for the F17
> drivers/methodology)
> Which screen-focus methodology does XFCE use? (Like the older Gnome, or
> the newer Gnome)
This probably isn't the best place to ask, partially because Fedora is
so Gnome-centric. Your best bet is to go to the XFCE support forum at
http://forum.xfce.org/index.php and ask there.
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the link.
I chose this list because there already was some discussion on the DE vs
DE, it was neither a Gnome nor XFCE specific list, and had the key
ingredient of upcoming multiseat support (F17).
I will try the XFCE list if this fizzles out.
Thanks again and kind regards,
Zoltan
--
===========================================
Zoltan Szecsei PrGISc [PGP0031]
Geograph (Pty) Ltd.
P.O. Box 7, Muizenberg 7950, South Africa.
65 Main Road, Muizenberg 7945
Western Cape, South Africa.
34° 6'16.35"S 18°28'5.62"E
Tel: +27-21-7884897 Mobile: +27-83-6004028
Fax: +27-86-6115323 www.geograph.co.za
===========================================
2:06 a.m.
On 03/28/2012 11:55 PM, Zoltan Szecsei wrote:
Does XFCE work in multiseat mode (or must it too wait for the F17
drivers/methodology)
Which screen-focus methodology does XFCE use? (Like the older Gnome, or
the newer Gnome)
This probably isn't the best place to ask, partially because Fedora is
so Gnome-centric. Your best bet is to go to the XFCE support forum at
http://forum.xfce.org/index.php and ask there.
4435
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5 comments
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participants (3)
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Zoltan Szecsei