Comment by chris_st
14 hours ago
> the fact there are two pointers on the screen -- one for the mouse and one for the keyboard -- if you slide the mouse pointer to a specific point and press a keyboard key, the new key will not appear where the arrow is, it will appear where the text cursor is.
I remember using an (early?) Apollo computer that worked that way... I was warned by the person showing me, and a bit later he accidentally bumped the mouse while I was typing! Letters all over...
I believe this was in the era before X windows took off for unix boxes. I miss SunTools - it was nice and simple.
Focus follows mouse was a thing in the X11 era too. We are still in the X11 era, and it is still a thing. (-: Until X11 window managers like IceWM vanish entirely, it will remain a thing.
* https://ice-wm.org/manual/#focus-models
I think of focus-follows-mouse as a different thing. FFM raises the window under the mouse, but doesn’t move the text insertion point (at least on X and Windows, the only two places I can remember using it). But the Apollo’s window manager was different - moving the mouse moved the insertion point along with it.
but raising the window under the mouse also, for "true" FFM, gives kbd focus to the raised window, which will in turn (via whatever GUI toolkit is being used) moved kbd focus to some widget in the window, if possible.
It is impossible to generalize about this under X Window, since the behavior is entirely controlled by the window manager, and their behavior (a) varies (b) is very customizable.