Removal of XFree86-Misc

[Daniel Stone]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 02:52:00PM +0100, Bill Crawford wrote:
> 2008/7/16 Paulo Cesar Pereira de Andrade <pcpa at mandriva.com.br>:
> > Adam Jackson wrote:
> >> In the absence of API to control Allow{Deactivate,Closedown}Grabs from
> >> the client side, I suggest we should take those options out of the
> >> config file entirely.  Input people, any opinions?
> 
> >  I am not 100% sure, but I think the kde screensaver also uses it.
> 
> I already commented on this, but I think screensavers should be able
> to insist that (their) grabs cannot be broken.

This is the default behaviour, yes.  People who want to turn on weird
options can deal with it: sort of like how people who turn on
AGPFastWrite can deal with crashes.  ('But the crashes are so _fast_!')

> Conversely I'd like to
> prevent switching to console while the screensaver is running (for
> work purposes only; some clients are a little paranoid) ... but would
> like to allow switching away when it isn't locked, which is kinda
> orthogonal to the other issue because in this case I *don't* want to
> enable the DontVTSwitch option in the config, but have a way to force
> it  on when the screensaver is active.

Yeah, that'd be interesting to do, agreed.

> >  Still, maybe something more well thought should be done? Not having it is
> > almost like not being able to use ^C in a console, and we all know we hate
> > programs that trap/ignore ^C...
> 
> Much better description / explanation than my own, thanks!
> 
> I think this is something that needs to be possible, one way or
> another, and since I don't generally have to write the sort of code
> that messes with grabs and so on, I'm not too fussed personally where
> it goes ;o) perhaps XKB could grow a couple new APIs? We already have
> stuff for keyboard autorepeat and so on; all it takes is a function
> that returns the previous state and {en,dis}ables the
> (Dont)?{Zap,Switch} flags.
> 
> [ I'm hoping that compared with the prospect of further mangling XKB,
> someone will suggest keeping XF86-Misc ;o) ]

I don't think XKB is necessarily the solution, and I'm not convinced
it's even necessarily X per se.  If we use ConsoleKit (or whatever) to
manage these sorts of things, then CK could just deny the switch when
the screensaver is active.  Or only let you switch to a login screen,
etc, etc.  Seems more like what we want.

As for the in-session issue, if you don't want your grabs broken, then
don't enable AllowCloseDownGrabs or whatever it's called.  It's not the
default, so people who want to go out of their way to shoot their feet
off, can.  Far be it from me to stop them, big-statist though I may be.

Cheers,
Daniel
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