Thank you, Chris Siebenmann, for your explanation:

> I believe that VMWare grabs the X pointer when it converts the X
> pointer into a virtual machine mouse (or non-mouse, if the virtual
> machine isn't using it). The pointer stays grabbed until you manually
> tell VMWare to release it or, under some conditions, until you move the
> mouse pointer 'outside' the virtual machine's window. I think VMWare
> also grabs the keyboard here for the same reason.
>
> (I believe that the VM needs to be using the mouse and have the VMWare
> tools installed, at which point the in-VM driver signals VMWare itself
> to let go of the mouse.)
>

That's right: The Vmware jargon explicitly uses the term "grab" for this.
Mouse and keyboard are "grabbed" by the virtual machine when the latter's
display gets clicked. The grab is released again when a specific hotkey is
pressed (Ctrl-Alt) or, if the Vmware Tools are installed in the guest system
(and the mouse is supported), when the mouse hits the border of the virtual
machine's display.

>  All of this is kind of a hack. VMWare wants 100% of the mouse and
> keyboard events to go to the virtual machine without your host
> environment getting in the way, even if what you're doing normally
> has special meaning to the host.
>
>         - cks

It could be, that Vmware tries in this way to make the host system as
transparent as possible and to improve the user's illusion to interact with a
real machine instead of a virtual one.

But the resulting all-hardware-is-mine attitude seems to be the same in
fullscreen and in normal mode.

Juergen

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