Editora 0.12.2 and 0.12.3: finishing what the single-instance handoff started
Editora 0.12.3 is out, and it comes with 0.12.2 — two fixes to the same thing, both worth describing together. Grab it from the releases page.
0.12.1 made a file opened from your file manager reuse the editor you already have running, instead of starting a second one. That was the right change to the process — a second JVM and a second set of language servers is a lot to pay for a click — but it got two things wrong about the window, and both of them are the kind you notice on the first try.
The editor now comes to the front (0.12.2). The file opened, and the window stayed behind the file manager with a notification you had to click. The cause is the compositor rather than Editora, and it is a neat illustration of how window focus actually works. When a file manager launches a new process it hands that process an activation token, so the window it maps counts as user-initiated and gets focused. Forwarding breaks that chain: the token goes to the forwarding process, which delivers the file and exits without ever mapping a window, while the process that owns the window is an older one you have not touched recently. Its request to raise itself is therefore an unsolicited focus request from a background application — which GNOME refuses, marking the window as demanding attention instead.
The fix is to briefly pin the window above the others and release it straight after. A compositor honours that, because “always on top” is a window state rather than a focus request, and nothing is left pinned. The raise also happens before the file is opened rather than after, so it is immediate instead of waiting on the file to load — and still happens if opening fails.
A file from the file manager gets a window of its own (0.12.3). It was landing as a tab in whatever window you were working in — and with the “Editora Expert Mode” desktop entry, restyling that window’s chrome on the way. Before the handoff existed, such a click started its own process and so its own window; the point of 0.12.1 was to stop duplicating the process, not to change what the click does. The requested focus mode now applies to the new window, where it is unambiguous, rather than being imposed on one already in use.
Unless the file is already open, in which case the window holding it is brought forward instead. Two independent buffers over one file loses edits — save one and the other is silently stale behind an external-change prompt — and re-opening a file you already have open is an ordinary thing to do.
These windows are deliberately left out of your saved layout, so a file opened from the file manager doesn’t come back as an empty window on the next launch.
Everything else about the handoff is unchanged: it applies only to a launch that
is purely “open these files”, --new-instance still forces a separate editor,
and an instance is scoped to its config directory. The
command line page describes the whole behaviour.
The complete list is on the What’s New page.