Shortening the rope

X hs three major types of grabs: keyboard grabs, pointer grabs, and server
grabs. Keyboard and pointer grabs cause input (from the keyboard or the
mouse) to be directed to that window alone until the grab is released
(there are lots of options, controlling what happens to the keyboard when
the pointer is grabbed, whether to confine the pointer to the window, and
so on). You can arrange to invoke grabs after particular button presses or
releases, or particular keystrokes. This stuff is used e.g. when you hold
down a button on a menu (the grab is released when you release the button)
or when you start a selection in some text editor and yank the pointer off
the edge of the window while holding the button down: even though the
pointer is no longer in the window, pointer events are still going to the
window. That's a grab.

If the application fails to release the grab, events will keep going to
that window, and it's likely to get rather confused (plus, of course,
events won't go anywhere else so you'll be a bit messed up).

Server grabs are much harsher. If you grab the X server, all connections
other than the grabbed connection are ignored until the server is
ungrabbed. This strikes me as a terribly bad idea (if the grab isn't
released sharpish it's indistinguishable from a server lockup). I'm not
sure why this request even exists. Anyone know? What use is it?

... regarding breaking grabs, I can't find the documentation or code for
this feature in recent xorg-xserver trees. Maybe I dreamed it...