Open windows above

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danxx
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Mar 13, 2013 12:14 pm

Open windows above

Post by danxx »

I need to open a program so its windows stays above the others, is there a command for the windows manager? The program is vkeybd that is a virtual piano keyboard, thank you :D
Lew_Rockwell_fan
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2013 4:28 am
Location: Trantor

Re: Open windows above

Post by Lew_Rockwell_fan »

I'm not CERTAIN it will solve your problem but I suggest you look into wmctrl. You can get it to do all sorts of stuff LIKE this. I used it in a script to grab focus for the terminal the script is running in. Something else was grabbing focus which meant I had to do an extra step (clicking the title bar of the terminal) before clicking enter at one point. That annoyed me, so I added:

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sleep 1
wmctrl -a LXTerminal
In my case the sleep 1 was to wait until AFTER the moment some rude program was regularly stealing focus. It was predictably linked to the circumstances in which that script is run and wasn't a repetitive event so those 2 commands were sufficient to put that rude sumbitch in it's proper place. If you had a problem with frequent loss of focus I don't see any reason you couldn't scatter "wmctrl -a vkeybd (or whatever the window is titled)" lines throughout the script, even every other line if need be, or if it isn't a script you could launch it WITH a script that could reissue the command grabbing focus back for your ap as often as needed as long as the ap was running. You might have to use 1 script to call 2 others, 1 to launch your ap and another to be the focus policeman. Alternately, you might want to investigate somehow making the program that steals the focus more humble. I haven't tried wmctrl for that but it has a pot full of options I haven't played with. I'm no expert so with stuff like this I try this, I try that, I use a lot of debugging code (like:

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read -p "SOMEVARIABLE  is now set to $SOMEVARIABLE. Is that what was supposed to happen? Line number $LINENO."
), experiment with a lot of stuff, sometimes stumble on what works, and sometimes even understand why. I hope you're still checking this occasionally. Let us know what works out.
vasa1
Posts: 39
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 9:51 am

Re: Open windows above

Post by vasa1 »

Lew_Rockwell_fan wrote:I'm not CERTAIN it will solve your problem but I suggest you look into wmctrl. You can get it to do all sorts of stuff LIKE this. ....
Hi, does Openbox not have the ability to do what OP wants (or wanted)?
Lew_Rockwell_fan
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2013 4:28 am
Location: Trantor

Re: Open windows above

Post by Lew_Rockwell_fan »

Not that I know of. It is on a Lubuntu OB system that I have the script I mentioned. But what I don't know could fill a tiB drive. I also use wmctrl scripts to force windows that ignore my *rc.xmls and cover a hectare or 2 outside my monitor back into convenient sizes. In both cases wmctrl was the first thing I found that worked. So I didn't look further. If there is a more elegant way to do it I'd be interested to hear about it. But OP posted in March and got no answer until now?!?!? I suspect that means there isn't an easier way to do it.
drooly
Posts: 791
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2013 6:45 am

Re: Open windows above

Post by drooly »

i'm pretty sure openbox can handle this.

open ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml (the location or name might be slightly different on LXDE)
and go to the <applications> section.
there you should find a completely commented explanation.

you can use obxprop to identify the app you want to create a rule for.

this should get you going; if you need more help please answer here!

greets,

d.
Lew_Rockwell_fan
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2013 4:28 am
Location: Trantor

Re: Open windows above

Post by Lew_Rockwell_fan »

Thanks for the tip, Drooly. Another reason I need to study these *rc.xml files.
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