Re: Restoring properties on startup

[Tom Tromey <tromey cygnus com>]

Chris> Currently the desktop properties are not restored on
Chris> startup. Are there any current plans to address this?

"Currently" as of when?  I think the current cvs sources ought to
address this.  However, I have not tried it myself.

Chris> I see two options. One is to call the properties programs with
Chris> a switch at startup that would indicate they should set their
Chris> properties and exit. The other is to handle this in a separate
Chris> program. The former approach is nice in that everything is self
Chris> contained, but the later is nice because it reduces the number
Chris> of programs that must be executed when Gnome is started.

I don't understand the distinction.  Surely if you could arrange for a
separate program to be run you could also arrange for
"desktop-properties --init" to be run instead.  How would this reduce
the number of programs at startup?

Chris> Any opinions on how this should be handled?

Sadly, the X session management protocol doesn't really have any
support for proper handling of initialization commands.

What I mean is that if the user brings up desktop-properties multiple
times during a session, you'd really like there to be just one
invocation of "desktop-properties --init" at the next startup.

But this is impossible.  So right now the `--init' functionality in
the *-properties programs uses a magic property on the root window to
determine if anything should be done.

Anyway, I believe the basic framework for this kind of thing is in
place.  If it doesn't work, then it is just a bug.

Tom