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The help browser of Wolfram Mathematica is not getting window focus when clicked on it. Clicking links or buttons in the help browser works without the window focus, but copying code from or typing in it doesn't. I can get window focus on the help browser by using the alt+tab or the Window menu though. Switching focus between notebooks behaves normally.

I'm running Mathematica 8.0.4.0 on Ubuntu 12.10. Mathematica is the only software that has this behavior.

Has anyone else experienced this behavior or know a solution to it?

P.S. Question posted on mathematica.stackexchange.com too.

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A. Goossens
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  • Perhaps you should upgrade to 13.04 first... – haneefmubarak May 12 '13 at 18:27
  • At the time of my question 13.04 wasn't released yet... But I can report now that 13.04 behaves similarly. – A. Goossens May 13 '13 at 09:15
  • Try upgrading to mathematica 9. – haneefmubarak May 14 '13 at 01:59
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    At the time of my question mma9 wasn't released yet... But I can report now that mma9 (even 9.0.1) behaves similarly. – A. Goossens May 14 '13 at 10:01
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    @haneefmubarak: your two errors could have been prevented by just looking at the date at which i posted the question. Once bitten, twice shy... – A. Goossens May 14 '13 at 10:04
  • I know, but it's good to make sure that all problems get resolved eventually. If you had solved it yourself, you would have posted the answer (I hope). – haneefmubarak May 15 '13 at 06:20
  • Either way, did you ask Wolfram about it? – haneefmubarak May 15 '13 at 06:20
  • I have had this problem to, but with the update dialog. When I had new updates, the window popped up and should focus but it didn't. Was gone after a while. I'll try to look it up. – labsin May 26 '13 at 21:33
  • I remember on an old version of mathematica/linux, it behaved very oddly until someone gave me the tip to turn OFF NumLock. Throwing this in as a random thought in case it helps. –  Jun 06 '13 at 13:30
  • @A.Goossens Personally, the first thing I would have tried, before upgrading anything, would have been to determine the origin of the problem. Would you by any chance have another environment installed (xfce, kde, ..)? If so, could you try with one of them, see if the problem persists? – Jonathan H Jun 10 '13 at 06:58
  • @Bristol: the NumLock didn't work. – A. Goossens Jun 10 '13 at 09:37
  • @Sh3ljohn: I did not upgrade mma & ubuntu because of this problem. At this moment i do not have any other environments installed, but i plan to install lubuntu in a few weeks. I'll report the results here. – A. Goossens Jun 10 '13 at 09:39
  • @A.Goossens Good then. If I may, installing another desktop is just one command away: `sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop`. Select the other desktop when you login. – Jonathan H Jun 10 '13 at 10:45

1 Answers1

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The problem likely lays in one of two places

Suggested resolution not ordered by importance

  1. The window manager (compiz)
  2. The Java runtime

The window manager could just be giving you a hard time, they're easy to replace.

Ubuntu is not installing the Oracle Java by default anymore due to licensing issues. It's conceivable that the opensource version has a Java bug resulting in this window focus issue. Determine which version of Oracle Java you need ( don't install v7 unless necessary) and retry. Since Oracle Java is unsupported, I don't wish to cite other installation references as I don't know how well they work or even if they're secure.

Finally, Wolfram support is awesome, if you've paid for MM you should be able to get a response in a day or two. I remember being in their beta program for MM 4.0, they forgot to statically link motif to the build and the only reason it worked on my system ( well sorta worked) was because I had lesstif installed. They turned around the fix in about 2 days.

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