Clever Geek Handbook

Use the terminal to display an image without losing focus

I have a bash - script where I want to display an image to the user. This is possible with ImageMagick display

.

display image.png

But now the focus of the terminal window is lost and put into the image. To continue with my bash - script, I have to ask the user to push to the terminal before continuing. This is unwanted behavior.

Is there a way to display an image without losing focus on my bash terminal? I want it to work on Ubuntu Linux (12.04).

Focus lost

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3 answers


This is a not too awkward solution using wmctrl

:

wmctrl -T master$$ -r :ACTIVE: ; display image.png & sleep 0.1 ; wmctrl -a master$$

To explain I am breaking it down into steps:

  • wmctrl -T master$$ -r :ACTIVE:

    To control a window, you wmctrl

    need to know its name, which is the default title of the window. So this step assigns a unique name to the current window master$$

    , where the shell will expand $$

    to the process ID. You can choose a different name.

  • display image.png &

    This step displays your image as a "background" process. The image window will grab focus.

  • sleep 0.1

    We need to wait enough time for display

    his window to open.

  • wmctrl -a master$$

    Now we digress from display

    . If you chose a different name for your main window in step 1, use that name instead master$$

    .

If wmctrl

not installed on your system, you need to install it. On debian-like systems, run:

apt-get install wmctrl


wmctrl

Supports Enlightenment, icewm, kwin, metacity, sawfish and all other EWMH / NetWM compatible X-Window managers.

An alternative approach that does not require knowing the window name

First, enter the id of the current window:

my_id=$(wmctrl -l -p | awk -v pid=$PPID '$3 == pid {print $1}')

We can now use this identifier instead of the window title. Start display

while keeping focus in the current window:

display image.png & sleep 0.1 ; wmctrl -i -a "$my_id"
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Without losing the focus of the terminal, you can use sublime text to open any image



subl

image.png

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in addition to John1024's answer .

another way to get the view of the active window:

$ xdotool getwindowfocus

and set focus:

$ xdotool windowfocus <wid>

so the complete command will look like this (note the option -i

, this is important!):

$ wid=$(xdotool getwindowfocus); display image.png & sleep 0.1; xdotool windowfocus $wid

read the postscript about xdotool .

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