GNOME logout misfeature that needs to be fixed

[James Ramsey <jjramsey_6x9eq42 yahoo com>]

My complaint:

When using gnome-session, logging out of X using the root menu doesn't
work--it only closes the window manager. I have to use the GNOME menu
to actually log out of X.

When I first found out about this behavior, I thought it was a bug, and
I submitted it to submit@bugs.gnome.org. The reply I got essentially
said that GNOME's behavior was correct and the window manager was wrong
because the makers of the window manager assumed that the command to
start up the window manager was the last in the xinitrc/Xclients file,
and simply had the window manager exit rather than
do-something-something with the session manager so that the X session
would terminate properly.

I see a real problem with this explanation. It has been common practice
for quite some time for the window manager to be the last thing to be
executed in the xinitrc/Xclients file, so it is not unreasonable for
window manager designers to count on this practice. Also, session
management is not a universal part of X, and it may not be the wisest
idea in the world for the window manager to count on it being in use. 

In any case, I highly doubt that window managers will change their
existing exiting behavior to accord with the GNOME developers' idea of
the 'correct' way to exit. Given that, I'd say that the GNOME
developers have two main choices:

1) Let GNOME continue with its present logout behavior, which will
likely to continue to scare newbies who find their window frames
mysteriously disappearing on them.

2) Change GNOME so that GNOME exits when the window manager exits and
starts up with the same window manager that it had when it exits. This
might involve some slight kluges, but it will provide behavior
consistent with what the user would naturally expect.

GNOME has a lot of promise, and I'd hate to see that get subsumed by
bugs and misfeatures. This particular misfeature needs to be squashed.



===


----I am a fool for Christ. Mostly I am a fool.----

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