Mac – Awesome-wm a signal to rise client when focus received

awesome-wmemacslua

I've got my Emacs running on a tag worker with server-start launched. I have a file manager opened somewhere else (another monitor for example) and when I open a text file with emacsclient it successfully opens in emacs but doesn't switch to it and doesn't rise it up.

What I'm looking for is a client specific signal in the rc.lua. Something like:

client.add_signal("focus", function(c) c:raise() end)

I want it to be only Emacs specific. And switch to the worker tag at the same time. Alternatively can I do it from Emacs rule callback?

Any ideas? 🙂

Best Answer

I wanted the same thing, and your idea of an emacs callback is what finally worked. I have not tested it on awesome, but I am using dwm, and I suppose they are similar enough for this to work.

This is the callback function in emacs:

(defun raiseme ()
  (x-send-client-message
   nil                ; DISPLAY - nil is selected frame
   0                  ; DEST - 0 is root window of display
   nil                ; FROM - nil is selected frame
   "_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW"    ; MESSAGE-TYPE - name of an Atom as a string
   32                 ; FORMAT  - size of the values in bits
   '(1 "_NET_WM_USER_TIME" 0) ; VALUES
   )
  )

There are several ways to invoke the callback. For simplicity and flexibility, I have opted for a shell alias which invokes the callback and then the regular emacsclient:

$ alias edi
alias edi='emacsclient -e "(raiseme)"; emacsclient -n'

Hope it will still be useful ;)

For further reference on the message-type and values, see Window Manager Hints.

As for awesome's handling of this message, it seems that this event is handled. Source code is here.

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-- [...]
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I figured it out so I will answer my own question. This might not be the best or most efficient way, but it gets the job done. This question might fit more on stackoverflow since it is more focussed on programming.

I wrote this function, which grabs focus on the first client on screen (except for Conky, the system monitor I use).

-- Grab focus on first client on screen
function grab_focus()
    local all_clients = client.get()
    for i, c in pairs(all_clients) do
        if c:isvisible() and c.class ~= "Conky" then
            client.focus = c
        end
    end
end

I now call this function in rc.lua where the numbered keys are mapped:

-- Bind all key numbers to tags.
...
if tags[screen][i] then
    awful.tag.viewonly(tags[screen][i])
    grab_focus()
end

Best Answer

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