Floating toolbars prevent attaining focus when selected in Gnome taskbar

[gmlion]

If i use the taskbar to switch to openoffice, and openoffice has a floating bar,
the openoffice window get visible but not active.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 7.10 OpenOffice 2.3.0

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Confirmed on upstream's openoffice.org 2.4.0~rc2

[vanadium (ftack)]

Related to this issue: switching with the keyboard to an OOo Document where a floating window is active will display the Document and floating Window, but none of them is active and the keyboard does not seem to work.

Steps to reproduce the issue

1) Launch a Writer document. Open the style Window (F11) or open the navigator (already here, keyboard focus is lost and the user is obliged either to click or <alt+tab> to continue working)
2) Launch a second writer document
3) Press Alt+tab to go to the first instance: no window is active, no keys except system wide keys do anything. The user is obliged to click or alt-tab to regain focus.

The above can also be reproduced using the task bar with the mouse rather than Alt+tab.

In my opinion, this usability issue, which is an annoyance, deserves more attention than it currently has. The office suite is one of the central applications in modern desktop computing.

(Tested on Ubuntu 8.04 with OOo 2.4.1)

[n_anacker (anacker)]

This problem still exists in OO.o 3.0 and causes trouble for screen reader users.

[vanadium (ftack)]

The issue is related to the Windows manager. Currently I am using Compiz. With "Focus Prevention Level" set to "Off", there is no problem. I did not find such setting in metacity.

[GercoKees (gercokees)]

if that is the case, what about other window-managers? (fluxbox, Enlightenment, Sawfish)....?

[fsando (stfs)]

Confirmed in Ubuntu intrepid (all visual effects turned off) with Openoffice 3.

This happens when I double click a file, it opens fine is in front but last window (ie. nautilus where I just clicked) still has focus. Extremely annoying when looking through a lot of ooo-files opening and closing again. I constantly forget and close the nautilus window behind instead.

[Narcis Garcia (narcisgarcia)]

I've experienced the same problem since years/versions ago, and now with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and OpenOffice.org 3.0.1

Need to snap all floating toolbars to bottom of the window.

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

[This is an automated message.]
There are no new official OpenOffice.org releases in Ubuntu packaging anymore => Won't Fix

If the problem persists, please mark this bug as "also affects project Libreoffice" or "also affects distribution Libreoffice (Ubuntu)" if that has not happened already.

Please leave references to upstream OpenOffice.org bugs in place to allow cross pollination.

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

Libreoffice needs affected version. => Incomplete.

[GercoKees (gercokees)]

(Tested on LibreOffice 3.3.3
OOO330m19 (Build:301)
tag libreoffice-3.3.3.1, Ubuntu package 1:3.3.3-1ubuntu2)

[Caolanm (caolanm)]

Since

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/libs-core/commit/?id=46ea2f6cb38536aa1b1a259af2145a581e19f6e8

if you tear off e.g. the font color toolbar pop so that it floats free then open a new calc or writer window it all behaves very strangely.

The most obvious problem is if you tear it off in calc, then open another calc windows under gnome then you can't type into the second calc window.

Either way the torn off window floats above all windows, but it only has meaning to the original window within which it was torn off.

Its eluding me right now how to get the right effect of 46ea2f6cb38536aa1b1a259af2145a581e19f6e8 to not be decorated and look pretty when not torn off yet, and how to get the old behaviour of only floating above its original parent window

[Caolanm (caolanm)]

Created attachment 59387
seems a little better

[Libreoffice-bugs (libreoffice-bugs)]

Caolan McNamara committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=a482b89e4d9c41b6f7c1616d193ac6cde05a69a7

Resolves: fdo#48096 torn off popups trigger keyboard focus problems

[Caolanm (caolanm)]

caolanm->kendy: care to have a look to see if this is worth backporting to 3-5 series ?

[Libreoffice-z (libreoffice-z)]

I added Fix submitter as assignee because this will ease queries and bug tracking.

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

possibly related:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/26303
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/399765
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/999269

so yeah, good candidate for backporting.

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

reopen, selfassign for backport.

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

possibly fixed with:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48096
on upstream master

[Caolanm (caolanm)]

lets close this, cause it is fixed in 3-6-0, regardless of being backported to 3-5-X or not

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

On precise please test the version from https://launchpad.net/~libreoffice/+archive/libreoffice-3-5?field.series_filter=precise

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

fix released with 3.6/quantal.