I've been noticing odd behavior with the standard screen blanker in X11
on sparc (I don't think I've seen it on i386, which is my only other
graphics-equipped machine).  Today, I checked it out in more detail.
It seems to be operating backwards.  The state diagram seems to be
like:

1. unblanked->keypress->timeout timer starts->timeout timer expires->
   ->blanked.

2. blanked->keypress->unblanked->timeout timer starts->timeout timer
   expires->blanked.

3. blanked->cycle timer expires->{state 1.}

The default state seems to be 'unblanked'.  Any keyboard or mouse event
starts the timeout timer and when it expires, the screen WILL blank,
regardless of any intervening keyboard/mouse events.

Once blanked, the next keyboard/mouse event will unblank the screen and
restart the timeout timer.  If no other keyboard/mouse events occur,
the screen will spontaneously unblank when the cycle(?) timer expires.
It will then remain unblanked until the next keyboard/mouse event starts
the timeout timer and it expires.

It also seems to change behavior depending on whether there's output on
any terminal windows.  If all windows are idle, it seems to operate in
the expected fashion.

The system is SS5-110 w/cgsix.

-- 
John D. Baker, KN5UKS                    NetBSD     Darwin/MacOS X
jdbaker(at)mylinuxisp(dot)com                 OpenBSD            FreeBSD
BSD -- It just sits there and _works_!