[compiz] Getting the window having the focus

Raphael Wimmer raphael.wimmer at ifi.lmu.de
Wed Apr 28 10:22:00 PDT 2010


Addendum:

You might also be interested in the atom _NET_WM_PID of a window that - if  
set - contains the process id of the process owning the window.

By the way, three related links:
The EWMH spec that describes _NET_WM_PID and other intersting atoms [1].
A nice hack for adding arbitrary atoms (e.g. the file name you passed to a  
viewer application) to a window on creation [2].
The Zeitgeist project already offers a daemon for collecting usage context  
(afaik not tracking the active window at the moment) [3]


Raphael

[1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/1.4/
[2] http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@xfree86.org/msg05806.html
[3] http://zeitgeist-project.com/

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
Amalienstr. 17 / Raum 206                  WWW:     
http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de
80333 München                              Tel:    +49 (89) 2180-4659
Germany                                    Fax:    +49 (89) 2180-99-4659


More information about the compiz mailing list