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#40 Win32: plot window steals focus
When you issue the plot command on the Win32 version
of gnuplot (3.7 PL 0), the plot window steals the
focus. Bringing the plot window to the top of the Z-
order stack is reasonable, but since gnuplot is a
command line oriented program with its own 'command
shell' in the Win32 version, it shouldn't steal the
keyboard focus when you plot a new graph. To avoid
this problem, call ::SetWindowPos instead
of ::BringWindowToTop. The former changes only the Z-
order of the window, while the latter changes the Z-
order -and- activates the window. Its the activation
of the window that's stealing the keyboard focus.
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Again: 3.7patchlevel 0 is outdated.
And if you don't like the focus change, you can always
deactivate the bring-to-top feature altogether (Uncheck
"Bring To Top" in the graph window's context menu).
I'll look up SetWindowPos to see whether that's a usable
alternative.
But note that gnuplot (still) tries to be Win16 compatible,
so Win32-only methods aren't usable. And we're coding raw C
API, not C++/MFC, so there is no "::BringWindowToTop" method
anyway ;-)
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I didn't know about the context menu option. Yes, that
stops the window from going to the front -and- stealing the
focus, but the bug is that it steals the focus, not that it
brings the window to the top.
In my opinion, bringing the window to the top is useful,
but stealing the keyboard focus is not.
Both ::SetWindowPos and ::BringWindowToFront -are- raw C
API functions. They are not MFC and they are not C++. I
prefixed them with "::" on the front to emphasize that they
are global functions. Both of these functions have been
present in Windows since version 2.0.
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I've tried it out yesterday evening, and I think I have a
patch that can go in. There's one further complication,
though: non-critical patches are now only made to the
development version, which does have a valid reason for
transferring the focus over to the graph window: mouse
interaction, and the keyboard shortcuts that go with it. So
I did it like this:
if (mouse mode is active)
BringWindowToTop();
else
SetWindowPos(hwnd, HWND_TOP, 0,0,0,0,
SWP_NOACTIVATE | SWP_NOMOVE | SWP_NOSIZE);
If you don't see any reasons against this, I'll commit that
patch tomorrow, I think.
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What's "mouse mode"? Is that in 3.7 PL 0?
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As I wrote: mouse mode is a new feature of the development
version (in the CVS here at SourceForge). It's in none of
the 3.7.something versions. But it'll be part of the next
public release, whenever that may happen.
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Yeah, that's twice you've told me that its a new feature,
but I still don't know what it is or what it does. Care to
elaborate?
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Mouse-able zooming in 2D, indicates mouse position in plot
coordinates, lets you toggle some graph features by single
keypress, and other things like that. In short: all those
things you would always have liked to use a mouse for, in
the graph window, but never could. For more insight, compile
the CVS version and see for yourself.
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Alright, given that description I would agree that
BringWindowToTop is what you want if you've got mouse mode
enabled.
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A fix along the lines discussed is in CVS as of 3.8k patchlevel 1.