GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 480457
"locate pointer" feature vanished
Last modified: 2008-01-16 17:10:41 UTC
Was this lost during the move of the cursor tab to the appearance capplet ? Can we have it back, please ? I have people asking for it... https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=301891
I didn't notice it was gone, it was really useful for me (ok I used it just sometimes, but that's why the preference was useful, to turn it on when I need it :)). I humbly think this is a regression, it's an useful a11y feature.
We certainly didn't remove it on purpose. Denis, did it just slip through, or was there something else?
This is indeed a regression, I must have overlooked the feature when removing the Pointers tab. A fix for this should probably be backported to the 2.20 branch.
See also: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123462 Bill Haneman notes that 'Locate Pointer' via Ctrl is highly TOXIC to accessibility. Things like Ctrl+dragging files can apparently freeze the desktop. It is "architecturally broken" and does an Xserver grab + Ctrl key grab. Possible A.T. conflicts too.
We're well aware of the fact that the implementation is suboptimal (cf. bug 125618, bug 357032). The problem is that currently we don't have any alternatives. At GUADEC it was suggested to try moving the Locate Pointer funtionality down to X. If anybody wanted to pursue this, that'd be very welcome. In the meantime, it might not be a bad idea to move away from Ctrl, but I suspect we'll encounter similar conflicts with most other keys, too.
You could cop out and make it a configurable shortcut...
I re-added the "Locate Pointer" preference in gnome-control-center trunk. It will appear again in GNOME 2.21.5.
Making it a configurable shortcut might still be a good idea, to help with the problems outlined in comment #4
A configurable shortcut is discussed in bug #123462, I propose to add further comments about this feature there. Closing this bug as the original bug was fixed in GNOME 2.21.5.