Re: Launching vs. Raising an application...

["Nathan 'Nato' Uno" <Nato unos net>]

>.
On  6 Oct, Liss Svanberg wrote:
> In a previous letter Ami Ganguli [aganguli@interlog.com] wrote:
> 
> <stuff deleted>
>> A common problem is confusion between launching and application
>> and raising/maximizing an application that's already open.  I've
>> often found users having trouble because they'd somehow opened
>> a dozen or so copies of the same program.  New users find it intuitive
>> that in order to get back an application that has "disappeared" (i.e..
>> you've minimized it or hidden it behind a window)  you repeat
>> whatever you did to start the thing in the first place.  Why not
>> try to blur or eliminate the distinction between minimized and
>> terminated applications?
>>
>> 1/  Each Gnome app creates a PID file when it starts.  If a previous
>> PID file exists, check if the process is really running and take some
>> action to maximize it, as this is probably what the user wants.
> 
> Well, here I am sitting, trying to find something nasty to point out because I don't like your idea at all. ;-)
> But I cannot! <grin>
> The more I re-reads your letter, the more I realize how really *userfriendly* this idea is, and gnome was supposed to be userfriendly...
> Bah...
> <pause>

My problem with this is that there are times when I WANT several unique
instances of a program.  xterm?  gvim?  So we'd need to have a way to
differentiate between applications that allow several instances and
applications that force the user to only have one instance...

Have fun,

 Nathan 'Nato' Uno
nathan.uno@coat.com