[SOLVED] Opening a file in Kate from Dolphin

[Hoth]

I've just updated from 18.10 to 19.10. Since doing so, the behavior of opening a text file from Dolphin into Kate has changed annoyingly. It grays the Dolphin window so that it apparently knows it's no longer the active window... but the Kate window stays hidden behind it, it doesn't come to the front. I then have to go to the taskbar and click on Kate to bring it up.

In 18.10, of course, Kate automatically appeared and showed me the file when I opened it from Dolphin.

I can't say whether it's Dolphin or Kate that's at fault, or maybe kwin, or an interaction of all three. Any ideas?

To work around the unpleasant situation I've tried pinning Kate to the top with the "keep above others" window option. That works, which means that it is un-minimizing Kate when I open a file -- just not bringing it to the front unless it's pinned to the front. It's definitely making Kate the active window too since I can immediately type in it (when pinned). I'd rather not have to continue keeping Kate above others though because that means I have to keep minimizing it to use other windows.

[jlittle]

I don't have the problem you report. I presume you've checked out all the settings in the "Window Management" item.

FWIW, I had the same problem some years ago, but with xterm and gvim. Eventually I found that the cause was an environment variable, DESKTOP_STARTUP_ID. If this was set, gvim would not gain focus when started. I reported it to the xterm maintainer and he made a change to unset it. In kate in theory you could use a javascript plug-in that could check on environment variables, but I've no idea how that would work. (kate seems to be slowly becoming a real editor, the gaps are being filled in thoroughly, but there's still deal-breaker gaps from my point of view.) In dolphin you could use F4 to get a shell prompt and check environment variables there, but I think you couldn't be absolutely sure the environment is the same as that given to kate.

I wonder if other editors have this behaviour for you, and if editing file with kate from a second dolphin instance is problematic.

[Hoth]

The problem seems to have gone away after I closed and restarted Kate. (I normally have Kate open 24/7 with dozens of documents and hate to lose track of my work by closing it.)