Can I move focus and swap windows from the command line?

[WJCFerguson]

I (believe I) want to be able to trigger directional activation and movement of windows from a script or command. Is this possible?

As a secondary issue I want to get the title of the focused window, but I know I can do that with external tools if necessary.

My specific usage: I use Emacs, with its own internal "window" (aka "pane") management. I bind keys to a script that passes the request to Emacs if it's focused but otherwise passes them on to the WM. Also when I hit the edge of Emacs I pass the request out to the WM. I've done this in i3 and herbstluftwm and others and at this point I don't want to have to live without it. e.g. in i3 I can run i3-msg focus left.

[Lythenas]

At the moment this is not possible. And unfortunately (as far as I know) Gnome doesn't really provide an easy to use mechanism to do it.

I have been experimenting a bit with DBus. See #774 That would allow you to do what you want. But it's still just a proof of concept.

[WJCFerguson]

I think my workaround may be to set up obscure bindings I'll never manually type, and having ydotool send them when I want to script actions. e.g. bindings with Super-Alt-Control-Shift.