keep focus in command window

how can I keep keyboard focus in the command or edit window, even if I create, change or clf a figure?

or to ask another way: how can I prevent figures stealing my focus?

I'm using linux.

thanks

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Avoid using figure() without any arguments. Create axes explicitly and parent them against the figure. Parent all plotting elements explicitly against the axes (or figure, as appropriate.) Do not use figure(ID) to switch attention to that figure: if you need to switch attention then set(0,'CurrentFigure',ID). But with parenting explicitly the circumstances under which you will need to do that will be reduced.

[Andrew]

I didn't understand all of what you said, but

set(0, 'CurrentFigure', ID)

solves my problem. Thank you!

Answer 2

[Jim Hokanson]

You could also create a function that does what you want. In response to Walter's answer, I don't want to always work at avoiding calls to figure ... You can call this function at the command line and it will keep focus in the command line

function fig(h)
%
%   TODO: Document - replaces figure(h)

if nargin == 0
    figure();
else
    figure(h);
end

%Not sure what the best option is here but we need
%to wait until some point when Matlab has switched focus to the 
%figure before switching back to the command window otherwise due to the
%asynchronous nature we'll "switch" to the command window and then Matlab
%will switch to the figure
drawnow nocallbacks

commandwindow
end