Window Focus

» Source Code

WindowFocus extends OpenGazer, an open source gaze tracking software that uses any standard webcam, to change window focus based on where the user is looking.

Description

Using Python’s socket library to capture the results from a running OpenGazer process, the software in real time changes between windows based on where the user is looking. To do this, a couple of addition libraries are needed:

  • wnck
  • Qt through PySide

OpenGazer’s use of a standard webcam and local sockets allows anyone with a UNIX operating system to write programs that are linked directly to a user’s gaze.

Details

Qt is used to allow the user to select which windows are to be separated into the screen’s sectors for focusing through a simple GUI.

Wnck is used for all window handling from discovery and resizing to refocusing. To discover available windows:

screen.get_windows()
for w in window_list:
	names.append(w.get_name())

def getWindow(title):
    screen = wnck.screen_get_default()
    screen.force_update()
    window_list = screen.get_windows()
    for w in window_list:
        if w.get_name() == title:
            return w

Once the windows have been selected, we split the screen into the sectors then place each window into one of the sectors:

SPLIT = 2
sto = screensection.createSections(screen, SPLIT)
for i, window in enumerate(selected_list):
    sect = sto[i]
    window.set_geometry(wnck.WINDOW_GRAVITY_NORTHWEST, flags, sect[0], sect[1], sect[2], sect[3])
    window.activate(int(time.time()))