Some usability comments on chroot keybindings

Martin Lucina mato at kotelna.sk
Tue May 29 13:56:51 EDT 2007


Hi,

I've just been experimenting with the new chroot keybindings in 3.4, and
I have a couple of comments from a usability point of view.  (Should
this go into Bugzilla?)

1)  Currently, if you enter a chroot and press any keys *not* bound
inside the chroot, these will get passed to the currently focused
window.

This is probably a bad idea - I've found myself just during my
experiments pressing the wrong key and getting confused when I find it
being passed to the client and doing something silly.

I suggest that pressing a key that is not bound inside the chroot should
beep and/or flash the dialog displaying the keychain to give the user
visible feedback that the windowmanager is in a different *mode*.

If someone sees a need to keep the current behaviour it could be kept as
an option ("passthrough"?).

2)  If a chroot has been entered, but no key has been pressed for some
longish time (60 seconds?), it should be exited automatically.  This is
to prevent situations like when I get a phone call, then come back to
the PC and don't notice the chroot dialog in the corner.

-mato




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