oddity with moving "Link" icons on desktop (Ubuntu 13.10 Unity)

[Karl Auer]

On Mon, 2014-02-10 at 23:33 +1100, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-02-10 at 05:44 -0500, Tom H wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 12:31 AM, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
> > > - sometimes the window spread does not render all the windows fully.
> > > There is a gap in the spread; hovering the mouse over the gap shows up a
> > > border, but no window content, although clicking inside the border
> > > brings the window to the front as expected.
> > >
> > > - sometimes windows "vanish". ALT-Tab can sometimes find them, but
> > > sometimes not. Sometimes clicking on the sidebar launcher icon brings
> > > them back. I'm still collecting the evidence on that one.
> > 
> > I've never seen either of these problems on either 13.10 when I was
> > using it or on 14.04. Can you reproduce this? Or does "sometimes" mean
> > that it happens then everything's OK then it happens, irregularly and
> > randomly?
> 
> Neither is consistently reproducible. The first is just a bug - it may
> be related to my use of the compiz extensions Expo, Desktop Cube and
> Rotate Cube. Happens every third or fourth time I use "spread all
> windows"
> 
> The second is more nebulous, though now I have seen it a few times I am
> more alert for it and should be able to "catch it" when it happens. One
> theory I have is that when mousing about with the compiz cube I am
> sometimes catching the title bar of a window instead of the background,
> and am somehow selecting "minimise". Not much of a theory but it's all I
> have at present :)

The second part probably never happened; at least it has not happened
again now that I am looking for it. All minimised windows can be found,
either with ALT-TAB, locating their "ghost" in the "spread all windows"
display (see below) or by clicking their launcher icon. 

However, I can reproduce the first part at will. Clicking on the
background when "spread all windows" is active causes all windows on the
current active desktop to be minimised. Windows on other desktops are
not minimised. This was surprising behaviour to me, but now that I know
about it I quite like it, and it is clearly supposed to work like that.

After minimising the visible windows, if I activate "spread all windows"
again only *some* of the windows are visible in the "spread all windows"
display. Those that are not visible DO occupy screen real estate, and
when the mouse moves over one, its borders is shown, but no window
content. Clicking on or inside the border brings the window back to the
foreground with the focus. Doing "spread all windows again" will now
show any windows that were visible the last time, plus the window just
restored. So recovering from the situation means restoring the windows
one at a time ;-) Laborious, but at least they are recoverable. They can
also be recovered by clicking on their launcher icon, of course. 

In short, after minimising all visible windows, minimised windows show
up as "ghosts" - content-less borders. There's a certain insane logic to
that :-)

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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