Re: GNOME Start Script

[Marc Ewing <marc redhat com>]

Tom Tromey <tromey@cygnus.com> writes:
> Marc> That would be great.  Tom Tromey's session manager actually has
> Marc> defaults in it to start up a few programs (if you don't already
> Marc> have session information saved).  I think it actually suffices
> Marc> as a "GNOME start script".  Is that right Tom?
> 
> The session manager does act as you say.  My goal is that it should be
> the only program you have to run from your .xinitrc (or whatever).
> 
> However, the session manager does not yet start a window manager.
> Adding that is trivial, but I don't know how to decide which one to
> start.  Note that this is only relevant to the default configuration,
> so adding a way to configure this is overkill (since the user can
> switch once and things ought to work correctly from then on).

You're right, it probably is overkill.  But, a little applet that
kept track of what wm was running and allowed to kill it and start
another one via a menu would be cool.  But that's another story...

> One idea I had was to let the choice of default wm be a configure-time
> option.  Then the package builder could pick the default most sensible
> for the platform.  Does this sound acceptable?

That sounds good to me.

> Sadly, most (all?) window managers don't seem to be session-aware,
> meaning that actually switching is likely not to work.

I'm sure the next version of Raster's E will have session support,
but that's a ways off.  It seems like it would be a pretty simple
matter to add session support to, say, fvwm.  It doesn't have any
state to save (the window positioning is saved as part of the
application session, right?).  Does that sound right?

-Marc