Re: Does StartupNotify=true harm non-GNOME/GTK applications?

[Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>]

On 5/23/05, Kai Weber <kai weber glorybox de> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I hope I picked the right list to ask. If I add StartupNotify=true to
> the .desktop file of a Non-GNOME/GTK application could this lead to
> problems?

Yes, the busy cursor could be "stuck" for a while (about 15 seconds)
after the window is launched.  If you have built the
startup-notification module from freedesktop.org cvs, try this:

$checkoutroot/startup-notification/test/test-launcher /usr/bin/emacs

Move your mouse over an empty part of your desktop, and watch how the
cursor remains for about 14 seconds after the emacs window is
launched.  (Note that you have to hit Ctrl-C to exit the test-launcher
program as it never ends on its own).

> I read the startup-notification-0.1.txt. If I set StartupNotify=true
> then the application sends a "remove" message which ends the startup
> sequence. The application in question does this not, nevertheless it
> works: the "Starting bla" and the waiting mouse pointer dissapear when
> the application is started.
> 
> Who sends the "remove" message?

If the pointer is over an application, the cursor will change from the
busy cursor to the cursor for that application so that you can work
with it (try it--launch something that takes a while, move your mouse
over an existing application while waiting, and note that the cursor
changes from the busy one to the normal one; that's because working
with the app is more important probably--though it might be better if
we had a mixed cursor in this case with both a normal pointer and a
busy one).

The launcher application (gnome-panel, nautilus, or whatever) is
responsible for monitoring the situation and sending the remove
message as a backup if the application doesn't (which is why there's a
15 second or so "stuck period" in the emacs example I gave above). 
This can be kind of amusing when running an entire gnome-session under
valgrind, as all applications take around a minute or so, meaning that
the busy cursor goes away after a "short" wait and then the
application actually appears much, much later.

Cheers,
Elijah