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This section talks about both window systems and Emacs frames. When talking about just “frames” or “windows”, it refers to Emacs frames and Emacs windows. When talking about window system windows, which are also Emacs frames, this section always says “window system window”.
Window systems provide general ways for the user to control which window system window, or Emacs frame, gets keyboard input. This choice of window system window is called the focus. When the user does something to switch between Emacs frames, that generates a focus event. Emacs also generates focus events when using mouse-autoselect-window to switch between Emacs windows within Emacs frames.
A focus event in the middle of a key sequence would garble the sequence. So Emacs never generates a focus event in the middle of a key sequence. If the user changes focus in the middle of a key sequence—that is, after a prefix key—then Emacs reorders the events so that the focus event comes either before or after the multi-event key sequence, and not within it.
The normal definition of a focus event that switches frames, in the global keymap, is to select that new frame within Emacs, as the user would expect. See Input Focus, which also describes hooks related to focus events for frames. Focus events for frames are represented in Lisp as lists that look like this:
(switch-frame new-frame)
where new-frame is the frame switched to.
Some X window managers are set up so that just moving the mouse into a frame is enough to set the focus there. Usually, there is no need for a Lisp program to know about the focus change until some other kind of input arrives. Emacs generates a focus event only when the user actually types a keyboard key or presses a mouse button in the new frame; just moving the mouse between frames does not generate a focus event.
When mouse-autoselect-window is set, moving the mouse over a new window within a frame can also switch the selected window. See Mouse Window Auto-selection, which describes the behavior for different values. When the mouse is moved over a new window, a focus event for switching windows is generated. Focus events for windows are represented in Lisp as lists that look like this:
(select-window new-window)
where new-window is the window switched to.
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