Suggestion - implement ability to switch away from windows which have grabbed input
Submitted by Frank
Assigned to Xorg Project Team
Description
Currently, fullscreen/normal windows which have 'grabbed' the input (i.e. using SDL_WM_GrabInput() - mouse cannot move past window boundaries, WM doesn't recieve most keyboard events) have complete and utter control of the input system (except for a few special keys of course).
My suggestion is to set a couple more key combinations as 'un-grabbable' - i.e. they get passed to the WM no matter what. An alternative is to let the WM tell the X server which keys it wants un-grabbed (so that people who use different key combos from, say, ALT+TAB can still be satisfied - see below).
I think this presents a problem for users who need to multitask when one of the applications has grabbed the input. For example, on Windows (Windows comparison :), ALT+TAB will be handled no matter whether DXGrab is on or not, so that crashed applications can be closed or so that you can switch away from a window to do something else. Unfortunately, ALT+TAB is handled by the WM in X, and since an app that has grabbed the input prevents the WM from catching that key combination, there is effectively no way to switch away from most applications that grab the keyboard input (unless they provide a way to un-grab the input, and I have seen few apps that do this). This is especially useful for gamers, but I think has the potential to useful elsewhere too.
Cheers!