Re: launch feedback status update

[George Farris <george gmsys com>]

Heres the thing.  While we wait for the proper way to do things,
including waiting for KDE, they have had launch feedback for sometime
now.  It specifically looks bad on GNOME to not have anything.  

Yes, working at a University-College I hear it from users.  To tell the
truth I could care less about feedback because I've used Linux and X for
so many years that, well, one just gets it when they use it.

If there is any way to get some reasonable feedback while waiting for
the protocol to bubble to the surface it would be a good move for
GNOME.  I seriously believe that at least the start feedback should try
to go in if GNOME 2.2 if it is as trivial as is indicated. 


On Sat, 2002-09-21 at 08:53, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> Instead of creating more hacks at the toolkit/etc... levels, can we
> do it right and just get a patch to X, so that it will work for ALL
> apps, even those that don't use this "liblf" or something to notify
> that something is happening? X is the right place for such functionality
> to go, so that all X apps will support it. There doesn't need to be
> some "standard" and a specific protocol for apps and toolkits to use, it
> should Just Work (TM).
> 
> -- dobey
> 
> On Sat, 2002-09-21 at 11:12, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Here is what's happening in the wide world of launch feedback.
> > 
> > I have a library "liblf" on freedesktop.org that implements both the
> > proposed spec that I wrote up, and the current KStartupInfo protocol
> > used in KDE.  You can download a snapshot at
> > http://pobox.com/~hp/launchfeedback-0.1.tar.gz
> > I'm talking to Lubos from KDE about sorting out the two protocols.
> > The KDE protocol doesn't have a "launch ended" step, instead all
> > launch-feedback-providing apps learn about new windows from DCOP
> > messages sent from KWin, and stop feedback when one of those matches
> > the launch. So that needs sorting out.
> > 
> > With either protocol, I think we'll want GTK 2.2 to end launch
> > feedback when the first GtkWindow is mapped.
> > 
> > We probably want more GTK API eventually, to be able to start new
> > launch sequences, manually end launch feedback, etc., but for 2.2 just
> > ending feedback on first map seems sane. We might also add:
> > 
> >  gtk_launch_set_automatic (gboolean setting);
> > 
> > to disable the automatic end on first map, just in case someone wants
> > to write their own code or use liblf.
> > 
> > Appending docs on the two protocols.
> > 
> > After sorting out the protocol/toolkit level, we need to implement in
> > a few places in GNOME:
> > 
> >  - panel menus and launchers
> >  - when opening application help
> >  - in window manager, start apps on same workspace where the launch 
> >    started
> >  - nautilus
> >  - task list should show tasks as they launch
> > 
> > It's pretty trivial to add the "start feedback" code anywhere we
> > fork/exec a program, probably it can go in the desktop_file_launch
> > function. The task list and window manager changes are mildly more
> > involved but not really hard.
> > 
> > Before anyone asks, I'm postponing GEP on this until the protocol is
> > more sorted out.
> > 
> > Havoc
> -- 
> Rodney Dawes <dobey free fr>
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-- 
George Farris <george gmsys com>