Re: gmc & cursors

[Ronald de Man <deman win tue nl>]

On Thu, Apr 01, 1999 at 07:18:56PM +0200, Matthias Warkus wrote:
> +++ Wed, Mar 31, 1999 at 10:18:56AM -0600 +++
> Harold Campbell e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> > Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> > > 
> > > >  The other thing which is a small thing but I think would improve things
> > > >  is to use an hourglass (or equivalent) cursor while programs are
> > > >  loading.  I am constantly looking down at my hard drive light to see
> > > >  whether the program is actually loading.  Some sort of visual feedback
> > > >  would be of great benefit.
> > > 
> > > To do this right, you need notification from the programs.  To do it
> > > hackishly, you need cooperation from the window manager.
> > > 
> > >   Federico
> > 
> > Couldn't it be slipped into the gnome libraries? Just stop the animation
> > when the first window is mapped. Doesn't do anything for non gnome apps,
> > but you can't have everything.
> 
> This really isn't something Gnome should do. It's not the task of a
> desktop environment. And it doesn't provide any functionality in my
> book.

Well if you have that book on an NFS file server in a different building
so you can't see the lights of the drive while you're trying to open it,
it would provide functionality.

It might be ok to have this for gnome apps only (and to provide non-gnome
apps with an easy hook). Maybe check to see if an application links
to gnome-libs, and if it does, play the animation until it's switched off
by gnome_init(). I don't know how difficult that is, and I already see
problems with for example gnome apps that are scripts calling the actual
binaries.

Ronald