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List:       freedesktop-xorg-devel
Subject:    Please revert Xorg decision to disable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
From:       peter.hutterer () who-t ! net (Peter Hutterer)
Date:       2009-03-31 23:00:41
Message-ID: 20090331230040.GA30815 () dingo ! bne ! redhat ! com
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On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 08:39:48PM -0400, Gerry Reno wrote:
>   In reading the Release Notes for the Alpha version of Fedora 11 I 
> noticed a very disturbing change involving disabling the default 
> Ctrl-Alt-Backspace behavior of killing the X server.
[...]
>   I am asking Xorg to immediately reconsider its decision with respect 
> to this change in default behavior regarding Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.  Please 
> revert this change.

The "correct" solution would be to control zapping through xkb rulesets.
Currently, the default symbols include the action Terminate_Server on
Backspace. Removing this sym from the defaults and providing it through an xkb
option allows C-A-B to be activated at runtime. It also means you can remap
zapping to whatever key combo needed.

The patches required for this are:
- xkeyboard-config needs to remove Terminate_Server from the default symbols
  and provide it through a set of options.
- the server needs to re-enable zapping and require the xk-c release.

This is not particularly high on my TODO list, but feel free to submit
patches. Note that xkb had a major cleanup since server 1.6. I encourage you
to work against git master if you want to get this change in.

Cheers,
  Peter

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