Hey MacRubyists, This question isn't strictly MacRuby related, but if I get an answer I'd like to try and implement it in MacRuby. The OSX WM doesn't seem to be able to treat a stack of windows as an individual stack that you can cycle through, for example an entire "Space" is treated as one stack. I'd like to mark or treat a group of windows overlapping each other as one "stack", and when an application in that stack has focus, a key binding(such as cmd+p, cmd+n) would cycle through that stack. My question really is, what APIs would I look at? Is it possible? Is it feasible? Thanks Rob ---- http://robgleeson.github.com Website http://github.com/robgleeson GitHub rob@flowof.info E-Mail
On Aug 24, 2010, at 10:34 PM, Rob Gleeson wrote:
Hey MacRubyists,
This question isn't strictly MacRuby related, but if I get an answer I'd like to try and implement it in MacRuby.
The OSX WM doesn't seem to be able to treat a stack of windows as an individual stack that you can cycle through, for example an entire "Space" is treated as one stack.
I'd like to mark or treat a group of windows overlapping each other as one "stack", and when an application in that stack has focus, a key binding(such as cmd+p, cmd+n) would cycle through that stack.
My question really is, what APIs would I look at? Is it possible? Is it feasible?
I believe the key binding you are looking for is cmd-back-quote (cmd-`) ;-) Scott
On 25 Aug 2010, at 04:54, Scott Thompson wrote:
On Aug 24, 2010, at 10:34 PM, Rob Gleeson wrote:
Hey MacRubyists,
This question isn't strictly MacRuby related, but if I get an answer I'd like to try and implement it in MacRuby.
The OSX WM doesn't seem to be able to treat a stack of windows as an individual stack that you can cycle through, for example an entire "Space" is treated as one stack.
I'd like to mark or treat a group of windows overlapping each other as one "stack", and when an application in that stack has focus, a key binding(such as cmd+p, cmd+n) would cycle through that stack.
My question really is, what APIs would I look at? Is it possible? Is it feasible?
I believe the key binding you are looking for is cmd-back-quote (cmd-`)
;-)
Scott
_______________________________________________ MacRuby-devel mailing list MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel
Kind of :-) cmd+` seems to cycle focus between windows belonging to a single application. I'd like to group a random number of windows that don't belong to a single application, and cycle through those. It's quite possible my google foo is that weak and I'm missing something that is already a feature ;-) Rob
On 2010-08-25, at 01:13 , Rob Gleeson wrote:
Kind of :-) cmd+` seems to cycle focus between windows belonging to a single application. I'd like to group a random number of windows that don't belong to a single application, and cycle through those.
It's quite possible my google foo is that weak and I'm missing something that is already a feature ;-)
Well, there's this app that may do what you want: http://manytricks.com/witch/
Thanks for the reply Caio, Yeah that application looks promising but it doesn't do what I want, exactly. It's still nice and proof that it's most likely possible to do something like this. I want to create groups that you can cycle through, and from what I've gathered so far you'd need to maintain those groups yourself, with their order, etc. Ideally, this app would work solely through key-bindings, with groups being selected by focus. Just wondering can someone nudge me in the right direction as to what APIs I should look at. Thanks Rob On 25 Aug 20cyclable10, at 05:43, Caio Chassot wrote:
On 2010-08-25, at 01:13 , Rob Gleeson wrote:
Kind of :-) cmd+` seems to cycle focus between windows belonging to a single application. I'd like to group a random number of windows that don't belong to a single application, and cycle through those.
It's quite possible my google foo is that weak and I'm missing something that is already a feature ;-)
Well, there's this app that may do what you want: http://manytricks.com/witch/ _______________________________________________ MacRuby-devel mailing list MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel
On Aug 25, 2010, at 12:03 AM, Rob Gleeson wrote:
Thanks for the reply Caio,
Yeah that application looks promising but it doesn't do what I want, exactly. It's still nice and proof that it's most likely possible to do something like this.
I want to create groups that you can cycle through, and from what I've gathered so far you'd need to maintain those groups yourself, with their order, etc. Ideally, this app would work solely through key-bindings, with groups being selected by focus.
Just wondering can someone nudge me in the right direction as to what APIs I should look at.
The trick part, then, is that you want to switch between windows that exist in several different applications. Generally speaking, your application does not have access to the windows of other applications. There are routes one can go through to find out about them. One would be Apple Events (AppleScript). You could use Apple Events to query the remote application and ask them for their windows. Unfortunately sending and receiving Apple Events is kind of a pain. Applications are also not required to provide scripting access. The second mechanism would be through the Accessibility APIs. The Accessibility APIs should allow a "screen reader" to access the complete window lists of other applications so that someone who has trouble seeing could use it to switch between windows. The API would probably require that customers turn on accessibility to use your application, and your support may be somewhat limited based on how well applications support the Accessibility APIs. In general, though, I don't think you would need much support from applications as window management is largely handled by the OS. I think that would probably be your best bet to pursue if you're looking for an API to explore. Scott
On 2010-08-25, at 02:03 , Rob Gleeson wrote:
Thanks for the reply Caio,
Yeah that application looks promising but it doesn't do what I want, exactly. It's still nice and proof that it's most likely possible to do something like this.
So I guess you could ask the Witch author about it?
participants (3)
-
Caio Chassot
-
Rob Gleeson
-
Scott Thompson