Re: galf once more: application launch feedback

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Seth Nickell wrote:
> > I agree.  I think that notifying when the computer is busy provides those two
> > things though.  If the user clicks a program and it's large enough to not pop
> > up immediately, then cpu will probably go over the (user-defined) limit.  When
> > this happens, the hourglass will show until the program is loaded and the cpu
> > is back down.  This doesn't just apply to programs starting though.  Anytime a
> > costly operation is started the hourglass will popup and the user will know that
> > the computer is doing stuff.  It's interesting that you generalized a and b so
> > much because xalf or galf will only handle a very specific case that fit under
> > that list, namely application launch feedback.
> 
> And when their Apache web server receives 1000 requests/sec their mouse
> cursor in GNOME will change. And on a multi-user system when one user
> starts using 90% CPU, everyone's mouse cursor will change. etc.

To give more examples where this fails, consider people who run
distributed.net or Seti clients as a low-priority idle background task
on their computers (not that uncommon). They would always have an
hourglass mouse pointer this way!

As Seth says; the application launch feedback is to notify you that the
application you wanted to launch is in fact launching (something that
you may not know), not that your system is busy (something that you most
likely already know when you run a distributed.net or Seti client).


Christian