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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: [Fwd: Giving Feedback to Launching Applications]
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2000-01-24 12:08:44
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Waldo Bastian wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Andreas Pour wrote:
> > Personally I think using DCOP is a bad idea because a user
> > should be notified that an app has been launched the same way
> > regardless of which app is being launched.
>
> I am not aware of a reliable way to check whether an application, i
> general, is succesfully running. With KDE it is possible to provide
> such a mechanism via DCOP.  That this can not be use with non-KDE
> applications should not be a reason for KDE not to improve this aspect
> in its own applications.

The DCOP suggestion will work only if the author chooses to use this
feature.  But since an author is required to comply with something, why
not consider something non-KDE programs can also comply with (not just
for Gnome/GTK apps but for Motif/Qt/XForms/etc. apps).  Several examples
come to mind, such as (1) setting an XAtom for the window manager to say
I am up and running and then letting the window manager communicate with
the launcher (since in many windowing environments the window manager is
the launcher this is a logical choice), or (2) having the launcher listen
on a known named pipe -- such as ~/.launch and the app prints its PID to
the pipe when it is up and running.  Other solutions that are KDE
independent could work as well and as elegantly as DCOP, I am sure;
indeed I wonder if Matthias has considered this issue in his discussions
re: setting window manager standards.

Anyway, I still do not see how this is reliable.  What happens if the
program crashes/loops prior to sending the DCOP (or equivalent, see
above) message?  I guess you would need some sort of timeout.  This means
the system won't be much more reliable than waiting for the program to
map a window.  Also, how do you know whether the app will send a DCOP
notification when it is up?  Someone suggested that this info would be in
the .desktop file -- but what happens for example if the unique app class
is used and so there is no launch period at all?  or if a user clicks on
the KDE binary itself to launch it?   or if some .desktop files don't
have this info included for whatever reason?  The idea of getting
different feedback depending on all of these details is IMHO not user
friendly.

The zoom-out feature works the same in each case and reliably provides
the user the most important piece of information, to wit, that the
application has been launched.  I do not see a big benefit to knowing
when the app has "finished" loading, whatever that means (instantiated
its main objects?  mapped its main window?  ready for user input?); I
will know when it is finished loading b/c its window will appear (even if
it appears on a different desktop I will see in the desktop pager or task
bar that the window has mapped).

Ciao,

Andreas

KISS devotee ;-)

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