Description of problem: Occasionally when using X programs, there are text entry boxes that cannot be typed in to. This occurs in MatLab as well as PyMOL, two non-Redhat binary distributions based on glibc 2.4. I had thought that an incompatibility in the binary format was at fault, but now I have identified a text box in xemacs that exhibits similar behavior. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): xemacs-common-21.5.27-8.fc6 xemacs-21.5.27-8.fc6 xorg-x11-drv-keyboard-1.1.0-2.1 How reproducible: Always on these systems Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open xemacs 2. Select Edit -> Find... 3. Attempt to type into the "Search for" field Actual results: On my system, no matter what I type, the field remains empty, even when the mouse is over that particular field. The behavior is similar for MatLab when a popup window is visible and also for the upper PyMOL window. Generally, it seems that certain applications, when two text entries are open, one cannot take text input. Expected results: One should be able to type into all windows as long as mouse is over them and/or they are focused. Additional info: These systems are: four identically configured dell Precision Workstation 340, a Dell Precision Workstation 380, and a Dell Dimension 8200, all with 1.5 GB+ of Ram. nVidia drivers are installed (1.0-9631) freeGLUT is not installed, and instead I am using the standard SGI GLUT 3.7 (it works better with dialbox drivers, etc.)
It works for me in FC6 and current pre-release F7. However if I click on the main XEmacs window again and then return to the search dialog I can no longer input test there. Sounds like your issue (in other apps too) is probably an X toolkit bug.
See also bug 160544, this sounds like a duplicate to me. For me in KDE, returning back to the find dialog and resizing it downwards shows that the input actually does get there, but goes in the bottom, below the dialog borders into an area which wasn't visible before resizing. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 160544 ***