LXpanel does not raise after auto-hide

[daniele3]

I have auto-hide on in my preferences. When I pass my mouse on the panel to restore it, I would expect the panel to show up in front of the windows that overlap with its region. However, this is not the case: the panel is restored behind the windows that I used when the panel was hidden. This is pretty annoying since in order to raise the panel I need to click on it and this might activate some commands from the panel since in most cases I have to to it almost blindly.
Is there any options I am missing in order to avoid this behavior?

[Marty Jack]

In Panel Preferences / Advanced, make sure you have "treat as dock" and "reserve space" checked -- they are by default.

Beyond that, stacking order is completely controlled by the window manager, which is more than likely Openbox or Compiz. You do not say what your distro is, so we have no way of knowing what you are running as a window manager. You should take this problem up with your distro.

Once again, those of you who need help are going to have to get used to giving information about your distro and version, how you got LXDE, and such. Otherwise we cannot help you.

[daniele3]

Thanks for your reply. I am a gentoo user and my windows manager is lxde. Indeed, I unchecked the two options you mention (dock and reserve space), since I do not want them. Actually, for me there is no need for hiding the panel if I cannot use the space freed as a consequence of the hiding. I already tried to play with the configuration of openbox; I guess "raiseOnFocus" might be my friend, but I do not want this behavior for all windows, only for lxpanel. Perhaps there is some other option I am missing...

[Marty Jack]

If you unchecked "treat as dock", you will certainly get the behavior you are complaining about. Good luck to you if you think that is an option you "don't want." Have a pleasant day.

Also, your window manager is Openbox, not LXDE. LXDE provides the panel and session manager and a few other utilities.

[daniele3]

Let's try to rephrase my question once again.
Let's put is this way; I would like the following behavior: the panel auto-hides; when the panel is hidden, the windows are allowed to use the space of the entire desktop, including where the panel is supposed to stay; when the panel pops up, it stays in front of all other windows.
Is there a combination of options (lxpanel/openbox or what else?) that does the job? Thanks in advance.

[Marty Jack]

It should just work with the controls I mentioned set to the default on. The panel will only take the space that it needs in the minimized or unminimized state. The Dock setting mostly controls stacking order and the Reserve Space setting mostly controls making sure that maximized windows don't collide with the panel. What exactly doesn't work. Once again, it is up to the window manager, in your case Openbox, to lay out the windows and the stacking order. If something isn't working, the window manager should get the bug report.

Anyone who remains confused about the role of a window manager or the difference between "window manager" and "LXDE" can read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_manager

[Frank]

daniele3, SliTaz 3.0 does out of the box what you want. After playing with the settings in SliTaz a little I believe that the following should do the trick:

- in lxpanel: "treat the panel as a dock" and "minimize panel" must be activated (then restart the panel),
- in openbox' rc.xml: the key "<stacking></stacking>" inside the "<dock></dock>" section must have the value "Above".

[daniele3]

Frank, thanks a lot for making me feel my question was not so stupid!
Indeed it works the way you are describing (and with the "reserve space" option unchecked). I was missing that the "treat the panel as dock" option requires a panel restart in order to become active; that's why I could not make it work just by playing with the different options.

[Frank]

Frank, thanks a lot for making me feel my question was not so stupid!

It wasn't. That the panel needs a restart was non-obvious for me, too. I found that only by trial-and-error.