[compiz] Getting the window having the focus

Raphael Wimmer raphael.wimmer at ifi.lmu.de
Wed Apr 28 09:32:42 PDT 2010


Hi Christian,

This is not really compiz-specific but should work with every window  
manager:

The root window has an Atom _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW which contains the window  
id. This is probably what you want.

Try it out with:
xprop -root | grep "_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW(WINDOW)"

Cheers,
Raphael



On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:51:51 +0200, Christian Mertes  
<cmertes at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> wrote:

> Greetings!
>
> I'm currently gathering information that helps software in assessing the
> user's context. One very important such data would be the application
> that the user is currently working with which mostly is roughly
> equivalent to the name of the window that has the focus. Unfortunately
> I'm at a loss even about which API to ask for this information. As
> personally I am using compiz as a window manager, I'd be glad if anybody
> here could tell me about a way to get this information out of compiz,
> preferably without modifications to its code. If alternatively someone
> knows about ways to do this at a higher level (freedesktop, X, ...), I'd
> be happy about any hint.
>
> Many thanks in advance and best regards,
>
> Christian Mertes
>


-- 
Dipl.-Medieninf. Raphael Wimmer
Wiss. Mitarbeiter / Research Assistant

LFE Medieninformatik                       E-Mail:  
raphael.wimmer at ifi.lmu.de
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München     Skype:  real_raphman
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http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de
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