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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: [Fwd: Giving Feedback to Launching Applications]
From:       Waldo Bastian <bastian () suse ! de>
Date:       2000-01-24 14:33:58
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On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Andreas Pour wrote:
> (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)

Could be an option as well.

> 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?  

If it crashes we see that the process terminates before it registers 
itself. Looping can be detected with an appropriate set timeout.

> guess you would need some sort of timeout. 

Yes.

> means the system won't be much more reliable than waiting for the
> program to map a window. 

If we know that the window belongs to the application that would be an 
option as well. 

> Also, how do you know whether the app will
> send a DCOP notification when it is up?  

The DCOPsserver is able to tell us when an application registers.

> 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?

If it doesn't need to be launched we don't have to wait for it.

> 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?  

Then we hope for the best, just like we do now.

> The idea of getting different feedback depending on all of
> these details is IMHO not user friendly.

The feedback is not "different", you either are able to inform the user 
that a problem has occured or you are not.

> 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?); 

The application launcher needs this information to decide whether it 
should inform the user that something went wrong.

> 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).

_You_ know that, but the launching application does not.

Cheers,
Waldo

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