Why 'the logout problem' is a GNOME problem, not a WM problem

[James Ramsey <jjramsey_6x9eq42 yahoo com>]

I've harped on this before, but it seems to need repeating. If GNOME's
design allows GNOME to become accidentally bereft of a window manager
because a user does something natural, such as click on "Logout" on the
root menu and expect to be logged out, then GNOME's design is at fault.

It has been said that the reason GNOME allows this to happen is that
the window manager should exit via the session manager, not by simply
terminating. This sounds reasonable, except for one thing. Simply
terminating rather than using the session manager is typical behavior
for window managers. Why should GNOME be designed to expect the window
manager to behave in a non-typical fashion? That the window manager
exits by simply terminating should have been accepted as an engineering
constraint to be worked with.

The current behavior of GNOME is not appropriate, especially for
something that calls itself "1.0". Some suggestions:

1) If the GNOME developers really think that the window manager is the
problem, then perhaps they should provide code that points to a
solution, such as maybe patches for some common window managers. I
don't expect the GNOME developers to become window manager
distributors, but if they can jumpstart the developers of the window
managers to 'do it right', maybe they can solve the problem for good
and benefit everybody. (I am presuming that GNOME expects the window
manager to work with xsm, X's session manager, not gnome-session. If
GNOME does expect the window manager to work directly with
gnome-session, then it is being awfully presumptive indeed.)

2) Find a way to deal with window managers as they are. This may mean
having to give up some functionality, and possibly replacing that
functionality with something else that accomplishes the same objective.
Tough.

I can put up with bugs in GNOME because I know the developers don't
like them any more than I do. I find it pretty disappointing, however,
to find that the response to a nasty flaw in GNOME is passing the buck
rather than trying to find a solution.


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

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