GNU bug report logs - #23174
Windows : Emacs frame stays on top after Alt-Tab

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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: devi8 <at> null.net
Cc: 23174 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#23174: Windows : Emacs frame stays on top after Alt-Tab
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2016 10:02:09 +0300

> From: devi8 <at> null.net
> Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 11:17:26 +0200
> 
> GNU Emacs 24.5.1 (i686-pc-mingw32) of 2015-04-11 on LEG570
> 
> On Windows (7 Professional), after (?) switching from a Aero Desktop Theme back to a non-Aero Desktop Theme,
> pressing Alt-Tab will switch application windows, but the Emacs Window ("Frame"?) will stay on the foreground, which is wrong behaviour.
> Only after exiting and restarting Emacs is the correct behaviour restored again, and Alt-Tab works as expected.
> 
> I saw some discussions on the use of SetForegroundWindow and some bug reports that might relate to this.
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=6468
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=11513
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13954
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=11513
> 
> In general I despise applications that use SetForegroundWindow, because almost all of them fail to do what the user wants, because of lack of knowledge of other active applications and the user's intentions.
> This bug report is also an example of such behaviour.
> 
> Why not totally remove the use of SetForegroundWindow (except maybe for sys_kill and some places that try to fix "bugs"), or at least make it customizable so that I can disable it?

You may be right, but please explain how are the calls to
SetForegroundWindow related to the problem you describe.  IOW, please
tell the details of how Alt-TAB winds up calling that API, or how the
call to that API interferes with Alt-TAB.

Emacs calls SetForegroundWindow in only 2 specific situations: when it
was requested to direct a focus to a frame, and when it was requested
to raise a frame.  I don't necessarily see how is that related to the
issue at hand.

I also couldn't reproduce the problem, on Windows 8.1 and Emacs 24.5.
Maybe I don't quite understand what you did, so please describe the
recipe for reproducing the problem step by step, preferably starting
with "emacs -Q".

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