pointer grabs and developer guides

[Francesco Fumanti <francesco fumanti gmx net>]

Hello,


With the arrival of policykit in GNOME, a new authentification dialog 
has appeared and it is not possible to enter the password into it by 
using an onscreen keyboard. I suppose that the problem is due to the 
dialog grabbing the pointer!?


Consequently, I would like to propose the following idea:

Would it make sense to add a recommendation (if not requirement) 
about avoiding pointer grabs to the developer guidelines or to the 
GNOME HIG (or maybe somewhere more appropriate)?


Maybe pointer grabs are in some circumstances unavoidable; I really 
don't know. I hope that this thread will help to determine the 
necessity of pointer grabs and if it makes sense, start the process 
of a recommendation (requirement) about avoiding them; at least for 
GNOME.


I could have posted this email to the gnome-desktop-devel-list, but I 
preferred to post it to the gnome-accessibility-list, where the 
pointer grabs have probably the most negative consequences due to the 
usage of alternative user interfaces.


Finally, maybe that similar considerations would also make sense for 
keyboard grabs!?



Thanks in advance for taking the problem into account.


Francesco