Re: session management support

[Carsten Schaar <nhadcasc fs-maphy uni-hannover de>]

Moin Moin,

    Tom> Actually now I think there is no good solution to the
    Tom> initialization problem.  I can expound on this if anybody is
    Tom> interested.

I have a slight idea, how we could solve the initialization problem on
the client and not on the server side, but it's not that kind of
solution I would call beautiful.  I also have to admit, that I havn't
thought about it very much, so it might include some mistakes.  I can
tell you about in detail, if you are interested.

    Carsten> * The session id is read automtically from the given
    Carsten> command line parameters, when creating a new gnome_client
    Carsten> object.

    Tom> Yeah.  While this idea is good, the implementation is
    Tom> actually moderately lame, I think.  Not to say that it's your
    Tom> fault!  I think the idea of libraries extracting arguments
    Tom> from the command line is inherently lame.

    Tom> I think the problems involved (and I can enumerate them if
    Tom> you like) with this approach are solvable.  What we need is
    Tom> to give libraries the ability to add command-line arguments,
    Tom> and then having the parsing done in one central place.

You'r right.  I don't like this kind of parsing the command line
options either.  So, I would like you to send me the "arg.h" file and
to tell me about the problems you discovered.  One problem I see is,
that gtk takes away all options it knows.  I.e. if you create a new
gnome-client object with the parameters you receive after a gtk_init
call, you`ll never see for example the '-display' argument.

    Carsten> I would like this code to be understood as a proposal,
    Carsten> and would especially like Tom Tromey to have a look (and
    Carsten> possibly a comment) on this.

    Tom> My only real concerns are:

    Tom> 1. Does it work?  

I tested it with some small test-programms and xsm, but I will not
guarantee that there are no mistakes in it.  It software, so it's
supposed to have errors ;-)

    Tom> 2. Will you be updating all the clients that use the existing
    Tom> interface?

I'll try to download an actual snapshot this weekend, and to
update all clients after that.  I'm not sure, if I manage to make
guile interface.

    Tom> Other than that, it looks fine to me.

Sounds pretty good.

Ciao, Carsten

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carsten Schaar                         email: nhadcasc@fs-maphy.uni-hannover.de