Re: GNOME logout misfeature that needs to be fixed

[Havoc Pennington <rhp zirx pair com>]

On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, James Ramsey wrote:
> 
> 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.
>

Well, Gnome-compliant window managers should work properly here. Part of
Gnome compliance is doing session management correctly.

If your WM isn't Gnome compliant some things will just be lame. There's no
way around it, without making things lame in the Gnome compliant case.
 
I'm making a general point rather than saying you're wrong in this
particular instance.

> 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.
> 

This is sort of broken I think. Sometimes you want to change window
managers, so you exit it on purpose. You can even do this with a control
panel. I'm not sure gnome-session is smart enough to get it right all the
time.

If it can be gotten right always that's great, but if one of the
gnome-session or window manager people told you not, I'm inclined to
believe it. I can't say myself.


The general lesson is that Gnome's WM integration sucks, which is a result
of the WM independence. Fooling with stuff like the above is just a
band-aid fix; there are many similar problems, such as having redundant
logout buttons in the first place, or having several pagers or panels or
docks.

The real fix is Gnome-compliant and Gnome-adapted window managers. The
window manager should support logout via session management, or just not
have a logout menu item at all. If we had only one window manager we'd fix
it ourselves, but as it is we have to wait on the WM authors. Loading
Gnome up with crufy window manager workarounds is a shortsighted policy
that is really only useful for a short time.

Things will improve as more people use Gnome and submit patches to the
various WM maintainers.

IMHO,
Havoc