GNOME and focus stealing

[der.hans]

Am 08. Mai, 2008 schwätzte Ted Gould so:

> On Thu, 2008-05-08 at 13:59 -0700, der.hans wrote:
>> Hmm, apparently not. Does X have to be restarted for gconf changes to take
>> effect?
>
> Not in general.  GConf will signal the app to say that the value has
> been changed.  Now, the app has to be well written enough to listen :)
> I'm sure metacity is.
>
>> [0] Focus stealing should've not been an issue in the first place.
>>
>> [1] We shouldn't have to go to gconf-editor to turn on an important
>> security feature.
>
> The problem comes with things like password dialogs.  When Evolution
> prompts me for my PGP password it isn't actually the Evolution process
> doing that, it's Seahorse.  And that's the way I want it.  But I do want
> to be able to hit "Ctrl+Enter, ******, Enter" to send e-mail.

That's Evolution passing focus rather than focus stealing. Is there a way
for Evolution to say "if I have focus when seahorse pops up, please pass
that focus on to seahorse for me"?

If, however, you hit <ctrl>-<enter> and then move to another application
before seahorse starts up, then seahorse should not get the focus
automagically.

> In reality, X allows for this focus stealing in numerous cases.  One

Bad X, bad, bad.  :)

> would have to violate the X11 specification to disallow it.  It's also
> possible to put a full screen event mask in place to do key logging.  If

A key logger is yet another security reason for being able to control
what application has the focus.

> you're running X, at some level you're putting trust in a bunch of
> applications doing the right thing :)

Those running KDE claim it all works correctly under KDE. Is that just
because KDE requires better behavior from KDE applications?

> You might be interested in the NSA's X security extensions.  I don't
> think that anyone's implemented them yet though.

I'll just switch to KDE next time I restart X. I'm installing a new laptop
this weekend, guess I'll go with Kubuntu on it.

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
#  https://www.LuftHans.com/        https://LOPSA.org/
#  Don't step in front of speeding cars, don't eat explosives
#  and don't use m$ LookOut :). - der.hans