Re: A Proposal For The Addition Of Color-Reactiveness To The GNOME Desktop

["Matthew R. Briggs" <mbriggs switchboard net>]

Bowie Poag wrote:

> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > One thing that occurred to me that nobody else has mentioned is that sometimes
> > a program might not be able to report its own status to the WM (which would
> > handle the lamps or beacons).  If an app crashes or freezes (as has been known
> > to happen on occasion), the WM will not be notified, and the status light may
> > cheerfully and erroneously glow green, or blue, or whatever.
>
> Very true. However, the wm can be told to -expect- periodic "updates" from
> the application in regards to its status. If no updates are recieved
> within a certain timeframe, the program is assumed dead, and its lamp will
> be changed accordingly. See, we can work around that problem without tying
> it directly to the OS, or to /proc. It can still safely remain a function
> of the wm. Ain't it great? :)
>
> >     The original proposal called for using /proc, which would have provided
> > information about the execution status of a process, at the cost of being
> > non-portable.  Is there any potential for using some derivation of the
> > recently-announced libgtop to overcome this problem and implement this
> > innovation?
>
> Im sure it would be possible -- But, would it be neccessary, if the same
> functionality can be tied to the wm instead?

Point well taken.  However, there are a great many X11 applications out there that
won't ever get the necessary reporting code added, because they are ancient or their
maintaners don't have the time or inclination.  Wouldn't it be nice if these
"legacy" apps (legacy for this purpose, anyway) could still have some minimal
color-reactive functionality?  That is what I meant by an implementation independent
of the code for each program.  If an application wanted to report any additional
information, it easily could.

Matt Briggs <mbriggs@switchboard.net>