suggestions...

[Scott Johnson <sj aracnet com>]

A few suggestions for Gnome... I'm not sure if this is the right mailing
list for these, but it'll work. 

:)

1)  Many times, I have managed to get something (I don't know what)
sufficiently hosed such that Gnome fails to start properly when I log in.
In other words, some saved state is somehow inconsistent, and the various
parts of gnome_core hang and/or die, with nary a diagnostic printed on the
screen.  (Log files do contain useful stuff.)

Speaking from the perspective of an end user (one who tries to know what
is going on, but still is constructively lazy), this is Not Good.  For
end-users who aren't computer-savvy at all, this is Even Worse; the
average user won't know how to go perusing through log files (or even know
where they are).

My usual response to this, when it occurs, is to start tromping through
the various .gnome* directories and blowing away any file that looks like
it might contain saved state.

What I would like to see done (and I'm still new to this, so any
suggestions that I go and do it myself will have to wait awhile) is
a) provide a mechanism through control_center to blow away the session
and "start over from scratch" with a known-good default session; b) when
a session manager first starts, have a watchdog process that monitors
the session manager, and if it doesn't finish up or report in a timely
fashion, brings up a "the session might be hosed; continue or kill it"
dialog; if the user selects the latter, the default session is used.

While we're at it, the ability to save/load multiple sessions would be 
nice.  


2)  On a completely different topic:  I would LOVE to see a control panel
applet that (where practical) allows me to control the X server--doing
things like changing graphics modes and desktop size, restarting the
server, etc.  I'm not talking about dangerous things like changing video
timings, etc...I am talking about the equivalent of CTRL_ALT_+ on XFree86,
with the advantage that screen resolution etc can now be managed as part
of the session, rather than independent of it.  Perhaps this is something
better handled by a WM, and if the WM supports this, gnome_session should
use the WM for this support of thing.  Many window managers, however, 
don't...



Well, enough  suggestions for one day. 



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