[Xquartz-dev] Intermittent loss of input focus?

[Ben Hyde]

A forced upgrade means I have a new 2015 MacBook Pro, Yosemite, and XQuartz 2.7.8_beta3 (xorg-server 1.16.4) freshly installed over/under a restore from via Time Machine. Previously I was running 10.6.8 :).

So. If I pop up an new Xterm and start typing in many cases a few characters in the typing cursor will transition from solid block to rectangle. Naturally this means my input is lost. A few seconds later it will transition back again. At that point I can continue typing.

Sometimes when the keyboard focus departs I get a beach ball. Sometimes when it departs it never returns, but if I click in the terminal I can restore it.

I can occationally get this to happen without typing. I just open the xterm and start and the black keyboard cursor and after it bit it disappears, optionally I see the beachball, and optionally it comes back after a bit.

This behavior occurs dependably and repeatedly if I have work to do. I occurs less reliably if I’m trying to reproduce the behavior or record it in a screen capture. But even if I do record it it’s boring because all you see is the cursor changing.

Is anybody else suffering this affliction? Or would anybody like to suggest a treatment of big stick I might hit it with?

- ben

ps. Emacs is hell when you have this issue!

[Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia]

This has come up before.

The issue is http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ticket/58, and there's a radar filed for the issue that is pretty much just as old.

Note that XQuartz has no say in giving up focus. Something else is stealing focus from us. I presume since it is just XQuartz that is seeing this issue that there must be *something* I could do put XQuartz in a mode that would prevent this focus loss, but I'm at a loss to know what that is because I have no idea why the focus is being allowed to be stolen in the first place.

In any event, you can run the attached script (which Ken Thomases provided to the list a couple years ago) to find out what is stealing the focus and possibly stop it from periodically doing so (by disabling it, deleting it, etc):

[Ben Hyde]

Awesome!

The little python script you provided revealed that the focus thief as: Folder Actions Dispatcher (com.apple.FolderActionsDispatcher).

Which lead to misc. notes around the net about how it’s anti-social behavior[1] in Yosemite. No mention of focus stealing though. Some of these have procedures for disabling it. Having done that it seems to have resolved my problem. Tis a shame to lose my folder actions, but worse to lose my emacs :).

Joy!

Thanks so much!

- ben

[1] http://www.macissues.com/2015/01/30/fix-folder-actions-dispatcher-using-high-cpu-in-yosemite/ <http://www.macissues.com/2015/01/30/fix-folder-actions-dispatcher-using-high-cpu-in-yosemite/>

Post by Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia
This has come up before.
The issue is http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ticket/58, and there's a radar filed for the issue that is pretty much just as old.
Note that XQuartz has no say in giving up focus. Something else is stealing focus from us. I presume since it is just XQuartz that is seeing this issue that there must be *something* I could do put XQuartz in a mode that would prevent this focus loss, but I'm at a loss to know what that is because I have no idea why the focus is being allowed to be stolen in the first place.
<watch_activations.py>
Hope that helps.
--Jeremy

Post by Ben Hyde
A forced upgrade means I have a new 2015 MacBook Pro, Yosemite, and XQuartz 2.7.8_beta3 (xorg-server 1.16.4) freshly installed over/under a restore from via Time Machine. Previously I was running 10.6.8 :).
So. If I pop up an new Xterm and start typing in many cases a few characters in the typing cursor will transition from solid block to rectangle. Naturally this means my input is lost. A few seconds later it will transition back again. At that point I can continue typing.
Sometimes when the keyboard focus departs I get a beach ball. Sometimes when it departs it never returns, but if I click in the terminal I can restore it.
I can occationally get this to happen without typing. I just open the xterm and start and the black keyboard cursor and after it bit it disappears, optionally I see the beachball, and optionally it comes back after a bit.
This behavior occurs dependably and repeatedly if I have work to do. I occurs less reliably if I’m trying to reproduce the behavior or record it in a screen capture. But even if I do record it it’s boring because all you see is the cursor changing.
Is anybody else suffering this affliction? Or would anybody like to suggest a treatment of big stick I might hit it with?
- ben
ps. Emacs is hell when you have this issue!
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[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

Another focus stealer for me turned out to be google drive. It didn't
just steal focus from Xquartz, it stole focus from anything. And it did
so every half hour, when it tried to figure out if it was going to
update itself. So I disabled it. (That was months ago, so I may remember
some details wrong.) Perhaps it is fixed now? I searched around at the
time, and was surprised not to find any discussion of the problem. Which
makes me wonder if it was an interaction with something else on my
computer, which wouldn't bite many people.

– Harald