Re: GNOME logout misfeature that needs to be fixed

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

If you want a menu item in the root menu of your window manager that exits
out of X cleanly (I assume your window manager is configurable enough for
you to alter the menus in its config file), instead of making the exit
menu item call the window manager's internal exit function, make it
execute the command "save-session --kill", which will have the same effect
as exiting using the panel.  This will allow session managed clients to
exit cleanly.  This solution will work reguardless of whether the wm
itself supports session management.

James Henstridge.

--
Email: james@daa.com.au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/


On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, James Ramsey wrote:

> 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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