Hi, I noticed that some type of dialogs in Inkscape have troubles with Gnome 3. The problems became more visible in Gnome 3.14. The most annoying issue is caused by the default behavior of modal windows in Gnome, which is blocking interactivity in windows below the modal dialog and darkening the background. I guess it makes sense for a modal window to behave like that (after all, the idea behind modal windows is to interrupt the workflow until an action is performed), but it clashes with some uses of modal windows in inkscape, like live preview of effects and extensions. Under gnome 3.14, turning on live preview puts the extension window in the center of the screen and blocks the underlaying UI elements, making it impossible to perform required actions as picking colors from the artwork. The window can't be moved, which means that sometimes it also covers the region the user wants to edit.
I took this issue to the IRC channel yesterday, and su_v pointed out that it's really a window manager problem, which is absolutely true. The problem is that even though this default behavior creates problems in inkscape, it wouldn't be accurate to say it's a bug in Gnome, since it's a design choice to make modal windows act actually as modal dialogs.
So, this is the situation: Modal windows act like that in Gnome and that affects adversely some features in inkscape. It's quite likely that both parties will suggest that the other party is doing it wrong if this is presented as a bug, so my intention here is open a discussion about possible solutions for this issue.
Is there another type of GTK dialog that could be used for extensions and effects during live-preview instead of modal windows? Is it possible to override that behavior? Do you think it's sensible to ask Gnome developers to allow applications to override that behavior?
In this bug report Ryan Lerch added some information about the problem (see comments #7 and #9) https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/649441
This is not the only issue with the latest GTK+: Some windows have no decoration, so they can't be closed except by right clicking on the top (color pickers in document properties, preferences).
It is a wm problem, but since Gnome is one of the flagship DEs of libre software, it will be affecting a lot of users, so it would be nice if something can be done to mitigate these issues.
Kind regards, Gez.