How to force Focus Change (Alt+Tab) in Games?
 

Hi folks,

Is there any way of getting Alt+Tab (or another hotkey) to work in fullscreen-games? There are even some windowed games which won't let me switch back to my Desktop.
I know few MS-Windows Games with similiar behavior, that is to say Quake3 and Doom3. But I found a tool which lets you minimize Doom3 with a simple F11-Keystroke.

I'm looking for such a tool for Linux. Ctrl+Alt+Fx is not an option here.
I would deeply appreciate your help since I'm setting up a public computer and don't want those peeps claiming "Linux is weaker than Windows", mmkay?

More info
 

I have had this problem with for instance, Wesnoth, when it is in fullscreen mode but I haven't seen it with a windowed program. Can you give an example?

http://koti.mbnet.fi/lsoft/formido/formido.html

Formido, a small but fun shooter against overwhelming bugs.
You can run it in fullscreen though, but you don't have to. I couldn't use my mouse or change focus in windows mode.

Kubuntu 5.10 (KDE)

SDL?
 

I think this is an SDL problem. SDL programs tend to force focus (like this case), ignore TERM signals (Frozen Bubble for instance), and do other thouroughly annoying things like that. As far as I know the only way to fix this is by rewriting the parts of the source that make it do these things. If someone else can correct me on this and/or provide a way of getting around this it would be appreciated.

SDL apps can use Alt-Enter to toggle fullscreen mode. You can also toggle mouse grabbing with Ctrl-G. As for keyboard focus, this is up to the window manager, an app can't forcibly retain keyboard focus (unless it's fullscreen).

I don't think you can directly toggle focus from a fullscreen app because it grabs the keyboard (which is an X, rather than an app, issue). You need to drop out of fullscreen, then change focus. I could be wrong though.

Unfortunately neither works on any SDL app I have that has these problems. Thanks for the suggestion anyway though :/

Aargh, brain cramp: I don't know wtf I was talking about here, an app CAN grab and lock the focus. If the app has no way to release the focus, then I think this is a problem (bug) with the app.