App startup - notification and delay

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

Except for one application, startup notification is unusual and slow.

For a while it has seemed as though apps take longer to start than they used
to. Running xterm by window manager keybinding used to show an xterm before
I moved my fingers away from the keys, but now it takes at least a second.
My box is slow (P266/96MB), but I don't remember age making computers slower.
I doubt there's anything to be done about that, but it's not my main concern.

My main concern is when delays occur with startup notification. For every
application I run with startup notification except GnomeChat, there is an
appreciable delay between when the "Starting <app>" window list button
disappears and the application's first window appears. Sometimes the delay
is as long as the time the button was present. A few times I've suspected
a silent crash because of the delay.

The slowest starting apps appear to be the control panels. I'm not sure
whether they are slower; perhaps I just expect them to be faster so the same
delay as for other apps seems greater.

What I expect is for the "Starting <app>" window list button to be present
until the app's button appears. It should seem like the just the label on
the button changed. GnomeChat is very good about this.

I don't know is where the bug is. Is there something wrong in
libstartup-notification? Are apps indicating they are ready before they are?

Because GnomeChat is working so well in this regard, I suspect the problem
is app-specific. I hope that someone can look into this and spare everyone
a bug report for every app. (And I hope that doesn't sound like a threat.
I'm not about to spend that much time with bugzilla. ;-)

Cheers,
Greg