If something is typed in Gnome Terminal while X cursor is inside the terminal window, cursor is getting all funny ( long straight white lines going to the bottom of the screen ) until the cursor is moved. Nothing happens if cursor is outside the window.
I believe this behavior was intended by the author of gnome-terminal.
Again, ( see bug 7109 ) this is not "intended behaviour" because the same thing happens in WindowMaker's dialogs whether cursor is in the dialog or not, the cursor turns into a huge square-shaped thing partially colored and kinda shimmering that goes to the bottom of the desktop ( WindowMaker RPM was taken from one of the Distribution CDs ) and anything below the cursor becomes unreadable. This IS a bug and it is probably not related to Gnome but to gtk+ or even Xlib. ( I am not sure if WindowMaker is gtk+ based, sorry )
I have tried to pin this problem down to a particular library or program, and found that it goes as low as the actual X server. I use XF86_Mach64 ( 3.3.5 original from the CD, don't remember the revision ) and ATI Xpert@Play 8MB AGP video card. I also have Creative Voodoo2 3D accelerator. When I use XF86_SVGA this problem goes away, but another one starts. After I exit XF86_SVGA and try to switch to console mode it seems to put my video card to sleep. There is no video and monitor goes into power save mode until I start X again ( which I guess reinitializes the card ) but even if I start Mach64 driver I am still unable to get into the console ( even with CTRL-ALT-F1 ) unless I reboot the system. I will try it today on a different system with different accelerated server ( S3 ) to check if this problem reoccures and try it without the Voodoo card.
This sounds like an X bug - definitely not intended gnome-terminal behaviour. Hopefully Preston can figure out the details. I apologize for reassigning this bug yet again - hopefully this time it will be to a person who can fix it. :)
we don't do actual driver development, so there's not much I can say here, other than try out the XFree86 3.3.6 release in rawhide right now (or wait for 6.2) and see if your problem is fixed. If not, please reopen the bug.