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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 23:40:38
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Waldo Bastian wrote:

[ ... ]

> > 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.

Ahh, I see.  In that case, I wonder if it might not be easier for the
launcher to monitor the return code of the launched process using wait()?
If it turns out the child was killed b/c of a segmentation fault, illegal
instruction, floating point exception, bus error, abort signal, terminate
signal, kill signal or similar, WTERMSIG should indicate this (and in fact
a user could configure which signals s/he wants to be notified of -- so,
e.g., you can say notify me if an application dies of SIGSEGV but not if
SIGKILL did it).  If the program exited abnormally (as judged by the
return code and the presence of data on stderr), one could use its stderr
message to provide (hopefully) more meaningful feedback to the user.   If
the child exited normally, there should be no need to notify the user of
anything.

This approach would presumably work for all applications, would provide
some more useful feedback then just saying the app failed (you can
indicate why the app failed even if it was b/c of an uncaught signal) and
does not require any special feature of the application (beyond the
traditional return code and, to be more useful, a helpful stderr message).

Ciao,

Andreas

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