[xmonad] mod-shift-q is Harmful

[Ramon Diaz-Uriarte]

On Mon, 26 Dec 2011 07:44:40 -0000,Michael Witten <mfwitten at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just lost a lot of computation when a long-running program of
> mine was unceremoniously destroyed by xmonad.

> Now, I take almost full responsibility for this mishap, because I
> *did* in fact instruct xmonad to obliterate my entire X11 session
> by issuing the keys `mod-shift-q'. However, that instruction was
> a mistake; I didn't at all have that action in mind when my
> fingers went for it---and I'm a longtime user who almost never
> presses that!

> A goal of xmonad is to make the user more efficient, but I think
> this kind of efficiency is not what is intended!

> I'm no fan of forcibly hand-holding people, but I think it would
> be wise at least to show people up front how to configure xmonad
> to confirm this request (especially if it can be determined that
> information would be destroyed). Even better, a vanilla xmonad
> should probably come already configured with such a basic safety
> mechanism (a power user who doesn't want to be pestered with
> such trivial second-guessing could disable it).


I had a similar problem in November, and asked in the list for a
workaround (confirmation of exit, or four-key combinations). This is the
thread

http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2011-November/011984.html


I am happily using Daniel's solution, after changing the order of
"yes\nno\n", to make the default be "no" since I very, very rarely exit
xmonad (on purpose).



Best,


R.


> Sincerely,
> Michael Witten

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-- 
Ramon Diaz-Uriarte
Department of Biochemistry, Lab B-25.
Facultad de Medicina (UAM)
Arzobispo Morcillo, 4
28029 Madrid
Spain

Phone: +34-91-497-2412

Email: rdiaz02 at gmail.com
       ramon.diaz at iib.uam.es

http://ligarto.org/rdiaz