Re: Still need a hint for undecorated windows

[Philipp Lohmann - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Philipp Lohmann Sun COM>]

Bill Haneman wrote:
> Philipp Lohmann - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg wrote:
>>Undoubtedly. But my original point was just to say that
>>applications/toolkits have to grab the pointer, because else the WM will
>>mess their popups up. I just reacted to Mr. Pennington saying "apps want
>>to grab the pointer".
>> 
>>
> 
> I'll just note that this behavior turns out to have bad consequences for
> accessibility. For instance, if a user is trying to use an onscreen
> keyboard (one of the most common cases where this turns up problems) in
> 'dwell mode', any pointer grabs will disable the onscreen keyboard. If
> the user can only point but cannot click (for instance the user is using
> a head tracker), then s/he is locked out.

I perfectly understand that. But unless there's a solution where the WM
does not require the toolkit to grab the pointer, then there's no
choice: if the toolkit does not grab the pointer, the popups will not
work at all, if the toolkit grabs the pointer only accessibility will
not work. At least popups are accessible by other means, namely
accessibility bridges (either java or atk).

> XInput can be used to work around this by driving/controlling all
> onscreen keyboard devices via something other than the core pointer, but
> this introduces a configuration nightmare in practice for all sorts of
> reasons. Multiple HIDs work OK via XInput as long as you want them "all"
> to drive the core pointer, but if you don't, you're venturing into
> unsupported-land. So pointer grabs make it very difficult to support
> some configurations. Keyboard grabs are worse, you want to avoid them at
> _all_ costs...
> I am not suggesting an alternative, because I know failing to grab the
> pointer breaks stuff too (for everybody). I am just saying that one
> would be very desirable.

I totally agree. Grabbing should be avoided where possible; and this is
not only an accessibility issue.

Kind regards, pl

-- 
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing
that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly
go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at
or repair.   -- Douglas Adams