Re: Launching vs. Raising an application...

["Scott Gifford" <sgifford tir com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan 'Nato' Uno <Nato@unos.net>
To: gnome-list@gnome.org <gnome-list@gnome.org>
Date: Tuesday, October 06, 1998 6:21 PM
Subject: Re: Launching vs. Raising an application...


>.
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...


  A straightforward solution that would let users who want this behavior
have it, while we Unix geeks can still have the normal behavior, would be to
create a wrapper shell script (called, for example, launch).  This would
create the PID file, as suggested, then fire up the application.  When run
again with the same application, it could (a) raise the application, (b)
present a dialog asking if they'd like to raise the app or launch a new one,
or if there is more than one copy running through launch, (c) ask which copy
they'd like to raise.  Of course, anything not wrapped in this script would
behave normally.

  If you wanted the launch behavior, you would add

    launch /path/to/your/favorite/app

to your menus instead of just the command.

  Just a thought,

--------Scott.