Well, that particular case works now, but the Inspector palette still doesn’t behave like a floating palette for other things. The Inspector palette still takes the focus away from the other windows when you click in it, making it necessary to click in the other window before for mouse events to work in it again.

Well, just take a look at how the palettes behave in, say, Photoshop or, really, any other app that has palettes (Pages, BBEdit, er… FontLab).

In all these other apps, focus in text fields in palettes is active only temporarily, while you’re actively editing text. As soon as you hit [return], focus goes back to the document window. If you click on a button or adjust a slider on a floating palette, the palette only has focus momentarily, and as soon as you are done with the click or the adjustment in the palette, the document immediately has focus again.

In Robofont, you often have to click on the document window in order for it to regain focus after doing something in the Inspector palette. I find this behavior to be non-standard and disruptive. It feels unnatural, or at least violates my expectations about how it should work based on experience with palettes in other apps.

There is probably something about this in the old Apple HIG (Human Interface Guidelines).