gksudo feature request - Grey out the background

[Cameron Hutchison]

Once upon a time Eric Feliksik said...
> Since a few weeks, gksudo locks X - that is good. 

Oh dear. IMHO - that is really bad. My computer multitasks. Why should I
be locked into the task of entering a password? Very rarely do I see the
need for a system-modal dialog.

However, I assume the GNOME designers have their own good reasons for
this.

> But it's also very 
> confusing, especially since there are non-functioning window borders and 
> nothing visually changed. After a while people will figure out X has 
> been locked, because clicking is futile - but it's not obvious. The 
> whole concept of switching user is unknown to many, anyway.
> 
> I propose two things:
> 
> 1) dropping the window borders
> 2) repainting the whole desktop in grayscale, and THEN show the "Enter 
> your password" dialog.

It makes sense, but I dont think the behaviour belongs in gksudo. The
behaviour you describe should be used for _any_ system-modal dialog.
It would make sense for this functionality to be in the window manager.
Whenever a system-modal dialog is displayed, the window manager changes
the display as you have described.

I dont know if the window manager actually gets a chance to butt in like
this though, since none if its functions are available while a
system-modal dialog is displayed.