Alt-Tab - Not possible to alt-tab during a drag-and-drop operation

[Thiago Teixeira]

In some window managers (I believe KWin is one of them) the user is able to initiate a drag-and-drop operation, then press alt-tab to raise a window that will be the drop target, and only then release the mouse button so that the drag-and-drop is performed. This is not possible with Metacity, Beryl, Compiz or Xfwm. It is unclear to me whether this is a limitation of the window manager or some other part of the system.

------------------------------------------

Use Case:

Dragging movie/audio files from nautilus to totem.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. open totem media player full screen
2. open nautilus full screen
3. browse to media files
4. select some media files (e.g. a movie file) and move it to start a drag and drop operation
5. press Alt+Tab

Observations:

Nothing happens.

Expected Results:

Alt+Tab should allow the user to switch tasks and preserve the drag state, so the user can drag files from one application to another.

Notes:

Drag and drop works if the applications are tiled to the left/right of each other, or if they are windowed so it should work when they are full screen.

[agro1986 (agro1986)]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 7.04 final (Gnome)

Procedure:
1) Open 2 windows of Nautilus
2) Initiate 'drag and drop' in one window (click-hold an item (e.g., file), move the mouse)
3) Press alt+tab

Result: The alt+tab won't work

The usefulness of alt+tab while doing DnD is that it is a lot faster than binging the intended window by hovering its entry on the task bar.

In Windows XP, we can use alt+tab while doing 'drag and drop'.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug, that's known upstream, http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135056

[Kirils Solovjovs (linux-kirils)]

it also should be noted that window focuses on mouse_down, not on mouse_up, so dragging from a window is not possible without bringing it in front of other windows.

[VPablo (villumar)]

Please, give a hand in this wishlist, it will be awesome if implemented. I think is the only thing I miss from Windows.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Seems like upstream is about to get this fixed. Setting to "triaged".

[VPablo (villumar)]

Ok, thank you very much.

[drx (drx)]

BTW, DnD also doesn't work with all the funky Compiz window switching mechanisms ... which makes them much less useful and look like pure eye candy. It would be so great to take a file, "expose" all windows and then drop it onto a thumbnail'd window! Such stuff works fine on OSX btw :)

[Thiago Teixeira (tvst)]

drx: A workaround for that is to set Compiz's Scale to activate on the screen corner. It's not as nice as using the key combo, but it's something at least :) . Since it works with screen corners, though, I think the problem may be relate to GTK grabbing all keyboard events when drag-and-drop is going on.

[Nelson Benitez (gnel)]

According to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135056 Fedora is already shipping a patch that fixes this issue, how can we request Ubuntu to incorporate that patch because this is a good usability feature Ubuntu should also have.

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Confirming this bug for Hundred Papercuts since it only requires a small patch -- <http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=136114> -- to be solved and since Fedora already includes this it should be working correctly.

[Vish (vish)]

I'v subscribed the main sponsors , since the patch is a small one and mclasen mentions it is working fine in Fedora.
But upstream has been slow to react on this bug. Could the sponsors comment on mclasen's patch http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=136114 and if we can include it in Ubuntu as well?

[sven.buschbeck (bucks)]

Hi all!

Thanks for mentioning this bug - but I really think, it should be of higher importance. Actually, for me, this issue is the only reason why I have to use KDE, though I would really love to switch to Gnome - but not without DnD+Alt-Tab.
There would be a very happy Gnome user, if this one gets fixed! :)

Thanks guys!

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

I unsubscribed ubuntu-sponsors, because there is no debdiff to sponsor. I subscribe ubuntu-reviewers for the patch.

[Nigel Babu (nigelbabu)]

Debdiff containing patch from upstream gnome to fix this bug in metacity.

[Gabe Gorelick (gabegorelick)]

Is there also a fix for this in compiz?

[Vish (vish)]

Subscribing main sponsors again , we now have a debdiff ready to sponsor.
 and unsubscribing review team.

[avada (dqeswn)]

I followed the guide on wiki.ubuntu.org ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuPackagingGuide/BuildFromDebdiff?highlight=(debdiff) ) to patch metacity. I got four ".deb"s as a result, installed all of them. But it works the same, I still can't change to another window while dragging something.

By the way When could this make it to metacity?

[iacami (p-launchpad-algumacoisa-org)]

metacity --replace after run de .deb

[avada (dqeswn)]

Thanks iacami! Never would have figured out...

[Mathieu Leplatre (mathieu.leplatre)]

@dqeswn : could please post the resulting deb ?

[Mathieu Leplatre (mathieu.leplatre)]

I confirm Nigel's debdiff fixes the problem in metacity.

Let's now catch up with Compiz to fix this for most desktop users ;)

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

ha, it appears this had already been fixed by didrocks

metacity (1:2.30.1-2ubuntu2) maverick; urgency=low

  * remove debian/patches/04_worspaces_default_name.patch:
    - drop "Desk" term
  * add debian/patches/04_support_drag_drop_with_alt_tab.patch:
    - support alt-tab during drag and drop operation (LP: #11939)

 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:53:11 +0200

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

This bug wasn't auto-closed because of a typo in the bug number in the changelog :(

[Vish (vish)]

This bug was always only about metacity and not compiz! The compiz task was opened only recently.

Kindly open a separate bug for the compiz issue!

[Gabe Gorelick (gabegorelick)]

Filed bug #624810 for compiz.

[VPablo (villumar)]

I can confirm that in Maverick 32 bits (metacity) works alt-tab in a drag and drop operation, thanks. Now, the next step is compiz.

[Vish (vish)]

This was fixed in mutter too..! Someone just forgot the bug number! ;p

mutter (2.31.2-3ubuntu1) maverick; urgency=low

  * Merge from debian experimental, remaining changes:
...
    - debian/patches/04_support_drag_drop_with_alt_tab.patch:
      support alt-tab during drag and drop operation
...

 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:44:19 +0200

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

yeah yeah… :-)

[dayf (dayf)]

will this be fixed in ubuntu 11.04? cheers

[Mathieu Leplatre (mathieu.leplatre)]

Sadly, this is still true with Precise 12.04

[dayf (dayf)]

Sadly, this is still true with Precise 12.04 [3].
Thus, sticking to Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity 2D.

[VPablo (villumar)]

I'm sorry but, is this bug (2007) duplicate from the other one (2012)?, that bug is for Unity and this is for Compiz, isn't it?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Fixed. All the duplicates point back to this one now.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

I've targeted this to Compiz, but I'm not sure that's appropriate. Can someone please confirm what's actually causing this?

[Sander (svl-launchpad)]

FWIW, in my ubuntu 12.04 this works correctly under unity-2d - it's only 3d unity where alt-tab doesn't trigger during a drag action.

[Mathieu Leplatre (mathieu.leplatre)]

I had switched to Unity2D for a while, without figuring out :) Thank you for the feedback ! I now can add email attachment with no pain !

It would be worth trying out unity-next just for that matter actually !

[PS Jenkins bot (ps-jenkins)]

Fix committed into lp:unity at revision None, scheduled for release in unity, milestone 7.1.0

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 7.0.0daily13.06.07-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (7.0.0daily13.06.07-0ubuntu1) saucy; urgency=low

  [ Ted Gould ]
  * gtk_icon_info_free() is deprecated for g_object_unref().
  * Upstart event for when the indicators are loaded by the panel
    service.
  * Add an upstart job to unity-common.
  * Manage Unity Panel Service's lifecycle with Upstart.

  [ Didier Roche ]
  * add dep on autopilot-desktop.
  * Revert the panel on upstart from ted, it doesn't respawn as expected
    when another service try to communicate with the panel service and
    the consequence is a lot of tests failing

  [ Nick Dedekind ]
  * Uses a gobject weak ref to test for object deletion in the
    GLibObject tests. Previously was checking with G_IS_OBJECT on an
    invalid pointer, which was causing a segfault

  [ Manuel de la Pena ]
  * Adds support for payment previews that will allow users to buy music
    from within the dash. .

  [ Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre ]
  * Increase timeouts for hud functional and search tests.

  [ Francis Ginther ]
  * Handle StateNotFoundError when querying the label of a hud button.

  [ Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak ]
  * Now that we're using the new HUD, there have been some changes that
    typically cause test_hud tests to fail. Fix the tests to fit the new
    model. The first one is that generally we do not have indicator
    entries visible in the HUD anymore. Only application menu entries
    are in it now. The second one - the way the results are displayed is
    different. Now, instead of "Menu > Entry" we have "Entry (Menu)"
    etc.
  * Fix two HUD failures related to HUD slow action activation.
  * Fix some autopilot test failures, some related to test_shortcut_hint
    and some to test_scroll in launcher.
  * Modify all the hud_query_check lambdas to be more smart and error-
    checking. Same for the selected_hud_button method in the HUD
    emulator. Also, get rid of the troublesome test_gedit_undo and
    change it into test_gedit_save, which is easier to test and anyway
    tests what we want. Besides that we also now try to handle the
    StateNotFoundError exception in the HUD emulator, another cause of
    some AP failures.
  * Add a flag for -Wno-error=unused-local-typedefs, since this causes a
    FTBFS on ARM

  [ Michal Hruby ]
  * Don't activate a result twice after pressing Enter. (LP: #1188191)

  [ Sebastien Bacher ]
  * Use '%s:' string for preview hints, rather than just appending ':'.
    (LP: #1074038)

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * IconRenderer: preprocess an icon if its emblem has been shown/hidden
    In that way we can update its transformation. (LP: #1171476,
    #1171663)
  * UnityWindow: don't draw the panel shadow above a fullscreen window.
    (LP: #1171934)
  * UnityCore: add GtkWrapper to handle GtkIconInfo correctly for
    different GTK versions Fix a memory leak in LauncherIcon. (LP:
    #1180790)
  * SwitcherController: use proper long long types for
    WindowActiveNumber Otherwise an overflow can cause bad window
    selection after long uptime.
  * Unity: "s/unsigned long long/uint64_t/g".

  [ Chris Townsend ]
  * Fixes issue where minimiz...

[MC Return (mc-return)]

As this bug affects the Unity Switcher and is fixed, I've removed Compiz.

[Stephen M. Webb (bregma)]

Fix Released in Unity Unity 7.1.0.

[przekop (przekop)]

Will Unity 7.1 be availbe in Raring repositories?

[Stephen M. Webb (bregma)]

Unity 7.1 will not be backported to raring.

It's possible to backport individual fixes to the 7.0 series, but someone would need to volunteer to do that.

[ariel cornejo (arielco)]

Why does this have "Fix Released" status in Unity? I have 7.1.2 (Saucy) and still can't use the Window Switcher while dragging.

[Will Cooke (willcooke)]

At this point we won't be backporting this fix. It will be included in the next LTS.

[Alex ARNAUD (alexarnaud)]

Hello all,

Could it be possible to backport this fix also in the default Compiz switcher?

Best regards,
Alex.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

You will have to reimplement something similar to what Unity switcher did I think. The implementation is different, so it needs to be a proper implementation.