Every other day or so, Workrave starts to show the break windows not on top, but hidden behind windows of other applications. This is bad, as the system appears to become unresponsive (because I use block mode = block input) without any apparent reason. Of course by now I know it's Workrave, but it's still quite annoying, and there is no way to bring the break window to the front in that situation. Once this has happened, it also happens for every subsequent break until Workrave is exited and restarted.

I suspect that the z-position of the break window is only set once at the beginning by Workrave, and not every time the window is shown. I also suspect that the z-position goes wrong when I happen to use Alt+Tab (= window switching) at the same time the break window starts appearing. I use Alt+Tab all the time, so this would explain why this bug occurs relatively often for me.

ref bug #587

You are using Windows XP, not Windows Vista?

Yes, I'm using Windows XP.

OP reports via e-mail that the bug is no longer present after upgrading to the nightly build that has a fix for bug 587.