Re: [Nautilus-list] run-nautilus

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

On Monday, August 20, 2001, at 07:02  PM, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> > So in summary, you're saying that you would like running Nautilus from
> > the Programs menu to turn off the "manage desktop" preference, and
> > overwrite the old value stored in that preference, unless Nautilus is
> > already running. We don't currently have a way of doing that from the
> > command line (although you might be able to do it with gconftool :-)
> > And if Nautilus is already running, you want it to do what?
>
> I think if Nautilus is already running it should give you a new
> "blank" window (about:blank in mozilla; I guess in Nautilus the
> equivalent is to load your homedir or something). And of course not
> affect the desktop setting at all.
>
> If Nautilus is not already running, I would expect to just toggle the
> pref off, I guess that's right. It just seems odd to launch an app and
> have a chunk of desktop environment appear. Maybe no one else thinks
> so.

The assumption in the original design was that most people who are not 
running Nautilus all the time have the "manage desktop" preference off. So 
the experience of launching from a .desktop file and seeing the desktop 
management start up would not be something that would happen in normal 
circumstances. But I can imagine trying to be a bit more direct about 
preventing this.

Making a version of --no-desktop that turns off the preference (instead of 
hiding the preference and ignoring its setting as --no-desktop does) would 
not be too difficult. And we can make it be a no-op if Nautilus is already 
running. I'd love to straighten these out instead of making them more 
complicated, but this does seem to continue to be subtle and a bit 
confusing. Perhaps hiding the preference should be a separate command-line 
switch instead of a built-in aspect of --no-desktop.

(Note that whether a window is created or not is usually not dependent on 
whether Nautilus was already running, so that should be the same in either 
case.)

> > >  - if you are in KDE, you see all the GNOME menus. Running Nautilus
> > >    hoses you badly (KDE decides it's a fullscreen presentation program
> > >    and covers up the KDE panel).
> >
> > We do whatever it takes to prevent this nightmare.
>
> One thought is to try to detect KDE, there are various hacks for
> that. Or maybe we could formalize a real way to avoid multiple
> "desktop managers," much as we can currently avoid multiple window
> managers.
>
> I was trying to get away with just changing the .desktop file for now
> though.

I don't have a really clear sense about what the right solution is. 
Originally, the "--no-desktop" option was intended to help in cases like 
this. I presume a KDE user don't want to have a "manage desktop" switch 
that if turned on will cover the windows and "hose you badly". That's one 
of the reasons that "--no-desktop" hides the preference.

> > > Also, we need to hack gnome-libs to add --no-desktop to the usage of
> > > Nautilus as a help browser, in case you choose help for a GNOME app
> > > from KDE.
> >
> > Well, we need to solve the problem. I'm not sure that the current
> > "--no-desktop" is the solution.
>
> You've convinced me of that. So I think this is the same as what you
> want to do in KDE, and what you want to do from the Programs menu.
>
> Basically I guess the command line option is "pretend to work like a
> web browser, ignore the desktop thing, but don't mess up any current
> desktop management" ;-)

Maybe "--no-desktop" is right for this. To figure this out, the only 
questions we have to ask are:

   1) Is it OK to not see the "manage desktop" switch at all in 
preferences if Nautilus is invoked this way and not already running?
   2) Is it OK to remember the old setting of "manage desktop" and use 
that the next time Nautilus is invoked? The original idea was that at 
session startup time you would run "nautilus --no-default-window" which 
will manager the desktop if the preference is on and do nothing otherwise.

    -- Darin