Using "rofi -show window" with "focus follows mouse" doesn't work well

[novoid]

Hi,

I just stumbled over rofi as a suggestion to switch to arbitrary open windows via keyboard shortcut and a search query. Amazing.

The Problem

However, -show window doesn't work well with "focus follows mouse" which I prefer to have: switching to a window on a different (virtual) desktop does not give it the focus. Therefore, after using rofi to switch to the window, it is visible but I can't do anything with it without manually moving the mouse. (Please do not remind me of the nature of "focus follows mouse" - I'm well aware of the subtle conflict here. Outside of this issue, "focus follows mouse" does provide me benefits I would not get otherwise.)

I guess I now have identified that rofi doesn't support focus change at the moment. I don't know if this qualifies for a feature request. For the moment, I'm settling for a workaround and make it run:

Potential Workaround

This might be easy to be fixed. I identified xdotool mousemove -window 0x38000b8 200 200 for moving the mouse relatively to a window ID and I found rofi -monitor -2 -show window -window-command "wmctrl -i -a {window}" as a verbose definition of the rofi command where I might re-use the window ID.

Unfortunately, rofi -monitor -2 -show window -window-command "xdotool mousemove -window {window} 200 200" does not move the mouse to the window selected by rofi. I don't know what I do wrong here.

My naïve overall-approach which ought to provide me the functionality I need with rofi -monitor -2 -show window -window-command "wmctrl -i -a {window} ; xdotool mousemove -window {window} 200 200" does not work for the same reason I guess.

Therefore: how may I execute two different commands with rofi: one to go to the window and second to move the mouse?

Thank you for your advice!

[DaveDavenport]

I guess I now have identified that rofi doesn't support focus change at the moment. I don't know if this qualifies for a feature request. For the moment, I'm settling for a workaround and make it run:

I would turn this around: 'switching window with rofi does not work with the focus follow mouse'.
i think it depends also on how focus follow mouse is implemented. (you don't tell use what window manger you use.. so no way for us to check).
Rofi follows the standard (as far as I can tell) to signal via the X server to the window manager to switch focus to the selected window/workspace.

I think you still solution is with -window-command. if you want to execute more then one command, call a shell and execute the multiple commands in there.

[DaveDavenport]

you can remap every key via the commandline or config file.
Please check the manpages that are shipped with rofi, they exist for a reason!!

https://github.com/davatorium/rofi/blob/next/doc/rofi-keys.5.markdown

[novoid]

I understand and thanks for the pointer.

I've been searching the rofi man page and looked at the "SEE ALSO" section where I could find things like "rofi-theme" (thanks for this cool theme subsystem!) but not rofi-keys. With your link from above, I do have everything that makes the workaround running at my side:

rofi -monitor -2 -show window -kb-accept-alt 'Return' -kb-accept-entry 'Shift+Return' -window-command "/home/vk/src/switch-to-windowid.sh {window}"

I very much appreciate your time and I'll probably blog about my solution so that others are able to make to most of rofi and xfce when having "focus follows mouse". Greetings from Austria! 🙇

[DaveDavenport]

you never told me the version you use, so no way to know what manpages you have.
But the information was (again I don't know your version) in the main manpage for years! under the 'Key Bindings' section (but less verbose).

[novoid]

Fair enough: v1.5.4. (via Xubuntu 20.04 LTS) I usually add it to my requests and somehow forgot about that essential information here.

[DaveDavenport]

that is very very old.

[novoid]

For reference, the root cause of my issue might be this xfce WM bug here: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4/-/issues/224

Until this is resolved (the bug is at least 5 years old now), I'll still stick to the workaround discussed here.

[DaveDavenport]

Aah, happy to hear it is a known bug and not something unclear. Hopefully they tackle it first.

If answered, can you mark answered the question.

[novoid]

I agree, that this is no bug of rofi with respect to that.

Since the xfce bug is at leat 5 years old, I don't think that they're going to fix it soon. Therefore, I would still like to make the mitigating workaround run where an external shell script should be invoked by rofi.

[42sol-eu]

I used the -normal-window parameter to get rofi closer to the use case I wanted it.
I think this is a nice middle way still using the focus-follow-mouse and get the focus to the (much bigger) rofi window