To reproduce the problem: Start OpenOffice, type a few characters into
the Untitled1 document, do File->SaveAs, push the CreateNewFolder
button, dialog box with the string "Folder" preloaded in the text
field appears.

At this point the ability to type text into text fields seems to be
lost.  There is no blinking text cursor, it is not possible to cause a
cursor to appear by select-clicking in a text field or by pushing the
Tab key, and it is not possible to mark some portion of an existing
string in a text field.

Select-clicking on buttons and menus still works, thus I can exit from
the dialogs and OpenOffice itself gracefully.

The "typing disabled" condition now persists: If I start another
instance of OpenOffice I cannot even type a filename in the SaveAs
dialog box. To cure the disabled state I have to exit the entire
desktop (see comment below) and restart it.

SPECIAL PRECONDITIONS: I am using the OLWM desktop under RedHat 6.2
with the mouse set for left-handed use (xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1")
for some 9 months now. Although this may be an unusual setup my
impression in general is that this is a very robust desktop that runs
all sorts of X Window applications with no problems.