Focus Problem

[jgpaiva]

I think this has already been reported, and I already talked with mouser about this. But i thought it was only happening to me.
Recently, someone in the irc channel told me he as having the same problem, so i thought the best way was to post it and see if someone else also has it.

The problem is: sometimes, when i press alt+space to open farr, farr comes up but doesn't have the focus. And also, the alt+space seems to get sent to the active window.

Anyone having the same problem?

[nontroppo]

Yes!!! I've tried ALL focus options to see if anything works but I still have this. I also notice it happens more frequently on a multi-monitor setup for me. I can never reproduce it so refrained from reporting it, but three of us at least means our delusions are consistent!

[mouser]

does it happen with other ways of bringing up farr?

i've added ctrl+space as a way to bring it up now, as people suggested, let's see if that solves it - at least we would know if its's something specific to alt, which i suspect (it may be that alt+space while in another application can trigger the current application window menu).

[jgpaiva]

Good to know i'm not delusional.
I'll now test it in the new farr, with ctrl+space, and i'll report back if i find any problems

[nontroppo]

Yes indeed, ALT maybe a possible issue. I find CTRL+SPACE far less accesible - I'll try ALT+SPACE in the new version and see if it happens still...

[taichimaster]

Hi Mouser,

Once in a while, I also got into a situation where I have this focus problem.  And once it happened, I think it stays like that until I restart the process?

As a matter of fact, I am experiencing this right now.  When I hit the PAUSE/BREAK key, FARR doesn't come up as the foreground window.  It's hidden by my browser window from which I am typing this msg.  If I resize my browser, I can see FARR was actually brought up and its editbox has the focus (the caret is flashing).  So I am now in a state where I have double flashing caret (one in FARR, one in my browser), and when I type, the characters go to my browser's editbox as opposed to FARR.

I am using the latest farr build (v1.09.04)

[mouser]

i'm looking into it; not able to reproduce it here so that makes it hard to track down.

[lanux128]

i've added ctrl+space as a way to bring it up now, as people suggested, let's see if that solves it - at least we would know if its's something specific to alt, which i suspect (it may be that alt+space while in another application can trigger the current application window menu).

-mouser (March 05, 2006, 04:24 PM)

actually, alt+space is a windows hot-key to bring up the system-menu... i was having the same problems until i unchecked "Alt+Space to launch". you can refer to more windows keyboard shortcuts here.

regards,
lanux

[taichimaster]

I have learned more about the problem since my last post.  The problem seems to be related to the application Synergy http://synergy2.sourceforge.net. 

I have it set up so that my desktop (primary) and laptop are both sharing the desktop's keyboard and mouse. 

With that setup AND if I have NUMLOCK on, then launching FARR on my laptop through my desktop's keyboard doesn't bring it to the foreground.  However, if I disable NUMLOCK or simply use my laptop's keyboard to bring up FARR, then everything works fine.

So in summary, the problem doesn't seem to be on FARR's end.  However, I am still able to reproduce this behavior consistently and am willing to test any debug build in attempt to work around this.

Thanks.

[nontroppo]

I find that adobe acrobat reader causes more focus problems with alt+space than for e.g. Word - I can almost reproduce it.

mouser, can you tweak the "always maintain focus" routine to force focus after X seconds?

Also, is it possible to use ALTGR as a trigger - I tried ALTGR+SPACE in the custom trigger key but it wouldn't work...