Please add both patches in! I depend on kate for my daily work so this would be a great improvement.

Is mine fully working? I thought there was some problem regarding setting and unsetting it - Darrell have you tested it fully?

Yes, I fixed that. :) Your task bar cycler works wonderfully too. :)

Also we probably need a --force-sdi in case someone wants to force it. What do you think?

Maybe. The default is useInstance=false, which should be SDI, but that is why I asked for peer reviews. As I noted in my bugtracker comment, the fix works for me. The fix might not work for others who want SDI.

Also, I have been trying to force kate into a quasi-MDI mode for so long that I don't remember how to force kate into multiple windows. Even with a fresh profile I can't get that to happen. I don't know whether the problem is me or the new setting.

After my earlier post I tested with a fresh profile. The behavior is not the same as with my existing profile. With or without the useInstance check box enabled, kate will flash and then remain in the background. That does not happen with my existing profile. The same instance always get used but I admit I'm not knowledgeable about using sessions so the problem might be me.

Possibly my patch needs an if-then test against the useInstance or --use parameter.

I'll test further if somebody can tell me exactly what to do to force kate into multiple window mode.

The bottom line is we need others to test. :)

We probably should draft a basic test plan matrix with the various scenarios and options.

Also good work Darrell!

Thanks. I can't take much credit. The person who devised the workaround wrapper script with dcop helped me see a solution. I don't know yet whether the solution is robust or complete. I probably was premature in my exuberance because I forgot that others might not want to use kate in MDI mode. Yes --- works for me but what about everybody else. Oops! :(

Darrell

Well, let's hold the favorite beverages. Now that I have my senses back after my initial shock and happiness, I am realizing that certain usage patterns still fail to force kate to grab the focus.

With my existing profile, when I launch kate for the first instance through selecting a document in konqueror, then thereafter kate raises and grabs focus. And that was pretty much the extent of my previous testing.

Now I discover when I open kate from my task bar icon, which has the --use parameter, or the mini cli (Alt-F2), and kate is configured with useInstance=true, and then open a document from konqueror into kate, kate will not raise forward or grab focus.

Even drag-and-drop will not force kate forward with the focus.

So seems my solution works great but only when used in a specific manner. The nominal consolation is that is still better than what I had previously.

I might have found a workaround.

I set my global Focus stealing prevention level to Low (KControl, Desktop, Window Behavior, Focus tab).

For kate, from the title bar, select Advanced, Special Application Settings, select the Workarounds tab, then set Focus stealing prevention to Force/None.

For me, along with the patch, kate now works the way I want.

I haven't tested SDI.

Darrell

On 11 March 2012 17:04, Darrell Anderson humanreadable@yahoo.com wrote:

...

Is this a nice little patch so interesting that I should incorporate it into prepared updates for 3.5.13?

I don't see any reason the patch can't be back ported to 3.5.13. The patch is only two lines.

Darrell

And my patch was written based on 3.5.13 sources.

Calvin