Restore Script Editor focus

README.md

Problem

On Windows systems using Autodesk Maya, the text input field of the Script Editor doesn't regain focus after having restored focus to the main window. This event handler explicitly restores focus, if it turns out to have been the last active panel at the time of leaving the application.

Usage

Place the full contents of the script below into your userSetup.py and never again lose focus.

Tested on Maya 2013-2016+ and is safe to use on other platforms where it simply does nothing.

News

• 2016-09-01: Updated with a fix for Maya 2017; thanks @martin-chatterjee!

script.py

try:
    from PySide2 import QtCore, QtWidgets
except ImportError:
    from PySide import QtCore, QtGui as QtWidgets


class RestoreScriptEditorFocus(QtCore.QObject):
    def __init__(self):
        super(RestoreScriptEditorFocus, self).__init__()
        QtWidgets.qApp.focusChanged.connect(self.on_focuschanged)
        self.restore = False

    def on_focuschanged(self, old, new):
        self.restore = ("cmdScrollFieldExecuter"
                        in old.objectName() if old else False)

    def eventFilter(self, obj, event):
        if event.type() == QtCore.QEvent.ApplicationActivate and self.restore:
            try:
                script_editor = next(
                    w for w in QtWidgets.qApp.topLevelWidgets()
                    if w.objectName() == "scriptEditorPanel1Window"
                    or w.accessibleName() == "Script Editor")
                script_editor.activateWindow()
                return True
            except StopIteration:
                # Perhaps the script editor was docked
                pass

        return super(RestoreScriptEditorFocus, self).eventFilter(obj, event)

f = RestoreScriptEditorFocus()
QtWidgets.qApp.installEventFilter(f)

Nice! Thank you for cooking this! Never understood gist yet..

You are most welcome, @ewerybody!

Cheers Marcus, thanks for cooking this up!

On my side this does not work anymore in Maya 2017 (on Windows).
I just had a quick look and the following change/addition seems to work for me (at line 15)

Hope that's helpful to somebody else...

Cheers, Martin

            # (...)
            try:
                script_editor = next(w for w in QtGui.qApp.topLevelWidgets() if w.objectName() == "scriptEditorPanel1Window" or w.accessibleName() == "Script Editor")
                script_editor.activateWindow()
                return True

For the sake of completeness: my previous comment was rubbish, sorry about that... :(

For this to work you also need to:

• have import statements that try to import PySide2 (--> Maya2017) and fallback to importing PySide.

• change QtGui.qApp to QtWidgets.qApp (as in PySide2 qApp now lives inside QtWidgets)

  Link to my forked and updated Gist: https://gist.github.com/martin-chatterjee/7759bdc0a877424542afc7bc1db06b07

Thanks @martin-chatterjee! I've updated the gist with your changes.