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On 2011-10-25T16:09:24+00:00 Ben Shadwick wrote:

In many full-screen applications, multimedia keyboard keys (e.g. volume
up/down, mute, etc.) seem to get locked by the application and not
passed through to the desktop manager. This makes it impossible to, for
example, adjust or mute the system volume while playing a full-screen
game.

Observed in Ubuntu & Xubuntu 10.04/10.10/11.04/11.10. See related URL
for long-standing Ubuntu bug report.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/388547/comments/16

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On 2011-10-26T02:02:31+00:00 Daniel Stone wrote:

Sorry, I don't think you're going to love this answer, but there's not a
lot X can do about it.

As mentioned in the Ubuntu bug, some games decide to grab the entire
keyboard when running full-screen.  This is specified to override
everything else and give that client sole, exclusive, use of the
keyboard.  I'm not sure why they do it, but I'm guessing it's so they
can be sure Alt-Tab doesn't accidentally trigger or something, which
would be deliberately disabling hotkeys.

Anyway, if the game developers tell us there are shortcomings in our
input model that we need to fix so they can stop grabbing, we'll be
happy to take a look.  But for the moment, we're just doing what we're
told, which is: grab the keyboard to the absolute exclusion of everyone
else.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/388547/comments/18

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On 2011-10-26T07:39:47+00:00 Ben Shadwick wrote:

Thanks for your response.

Considering that pretty much every full-screen game I've played under
Linux has suffered from this, I have to believe that it's unintentional
on the game developers' part.

The fact is that we're now faced with a mountain of applications out
there in the wild that are already suffering from this and will
realistically never get fixed to use some alternate keyboard grabbing
mechanism (assuming such a thing is even supplied by xorg and is neither
obscure nor cumbersome to use). It therefore truly, realistically falls
to xorg to decide whether or not to do something to resolve this issue
that is resulting in a frustrating experience for many, many xorg end-
users.


Without any knowledge of xorg's internals, I can think of two 
non-mutually-exclusive general design level ideas that might help alleviate the 
issue:

1. Some kind of xorg configuration option/mechanism could be provided to
allow distribution creators, system administrators and/or end-users to
choose to exclude the multimedia keys from the global keyboard grabbing
mechanism.

2. Grabbing of multimedia keys could be spun out into a separate xorg
API call or parameter (or whatever an xorg analog of that might be) that
needs to be explicitly called/specified by the developer to signal that
they really, really want to grab and handle those keys.


Call this a feature/enhancement request if you'd like (personally, however, I 
strongly feel that it is much more important than that due to a large impact on 
end-users) but please don't dismiss it out-of-hand.

Apologies if reopening the bug is a faux-pas. I'm not sure if my reply
would be seen if I didn't do so.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/388547/comments/19

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On 2011-10-31T16:45:11+00:00 Jeremy Huddleston wrote:

Not a keyboard driver bug.  Over to the server, but I think this will just be 
closed.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/388547/comments/20

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On 2012-07-10T20:17:21+00:00 Brettcornwall-1 wrote:

I remember subscribing to this bug report many years ago. Too bad it's
still present. Indeed, it does appear that almost *every* game that
grabs input will grab multimedia keys as well. There are very few that
make the exception - and I mean very few.

I believe Ben S. stated it correctly in comment #2. It does
realistically fall onto Xorg - None of these developers would have
wanted to make it happen like this and yet they all end up this way. So
the issue lies with the implementation of keyboard grabbing. Isn't there
a better way to make media key control apply less in blanket
circumstances such as that?

If this isn't in the scope of Xorg's development, hopefully Wayland's
design could have this thought in the process. Regardless, it's a pretty
nasty bug that wouldn't best be solved by asking all of the developers
of every fullscreen app ever to go back and do something. If so many
instances are affected, there's something wrong with the implementation.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/388547/comments/22

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On 2012-12-06T20:38:55+00:00 Alexander Betaev wrote:

Hi,

I am a little bit aware about this problem.

It seems think that issue is in how full-screen games are launched
inside desktop environments. Initially, when user interacts with their
desktop all keyboard event are handled by window manager. When focus is
on application's window all keyboard events are dispatched to that
application by window manager. This way standard keyboard shorcuts work:
window manager just handles all input.

In window mode games are not exceptions: all events are dispatched to
them by window manager. But when game goes full screen window manager
occasionally looses ability to handle any keyboard events (as far as all
input events). This is well known libSDL 1.2 issue which is going to be
fixed in 2.0 major release. There are also some workarounds for this
issue.

I am also not aware about internals of X server, but I can propose the idea:
Initially all events are anyway captured by X server. So the X server should 
provide special input API (don't know if there already one exists) which allows 
any application exclusively lock keyboard shortcuts. This "shortcut lock" 
should be done so that any other application will not ever receive it until 
first one unlock it. Also after locking shortcut by one application other 
applications should not be able to lock it.
This is just bare idea. If such API already exists then its not X issue: all 
required abilities were provided, it a task of desktop environment to use it.  
and we should post bugs to window manager's trackers.


Thanks!

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/388547/comments/32

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On 2012-12-07T06:39:05+00:00 Alexander Betaev wrote:

Ben, You may use this workaround:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=735271#p735271 until issue
will be resolved on higher level.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/388547/comments/33


** Changed in: xorg-server
       Status: Unknown => Confirmed

** Changed in: xorg-server
   Importance: Unknown => Medium

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-settings-daemon in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/388547

Title:
  Volume keys don't work inside a full-screen game

Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
  Confirmed
Status in X.Org X server:
  Confirmed
Status in “gnome-settings-daemon” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  When I'm playing games in fullscreen mode, I cannot change the volume
  (laptop, HP tx2115nr with Jaunty) using my notebook keys. It's not
  possible to use my Play/Pause/Stop hotkeys (right side of my screen).

  I would like to change my volume without have to exit the game.

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