Re: Application launch detection

[raster rasterman com]

On  9 Nov, Havoc Pennington scribbled:
->  
->  Hi,
->  
->  We were recently discussing how to provide a progress indicator while
->  an app is launching in future versions of GNOME. 
->  
->  This list has had posts on it in the past, describing how KDE 2.0 works:
->    http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2000-September/msg00000.html
->  
->  There's a little utility called Xalf that addresses the issue:
->    http://www.lysator.liu.se/~astrand/projects/xalf/
->  
->  The Xalf page links to this post from Rik on a KDE list:
->    http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=95246257913097&w=2
->  
->  As I understand from Rik's mail, KDE 2.0 uses the PID property from
->  the WM spec to detect that an app has launched. A separate extension 
->  adds the boolean field MapNotify to the .desktop files, so that
->  launchers such as the panel know whether to expect to see a window
->  with the PID property on it.
->
->  The author of Xalf points out that the PID method breaks down in
->  several cases; for example, when an app is run from a wrapper script. 
->  So Xalf improves on this by having the launching app set an env
->  variable which the launch app advertises on mapped windows.
->  
->  Several proposals:
->  
->   1) We should specify a property on app windows that is set to the
->      value of the environment variable DESKTOP_LAUNCH_ID. If
->      DESKTOP_LAUNCH_ID is not set, then the property is not set
->      either. The value of DESKTOP_LAUNCH_ID can be any string, it's
->      totally interpreted by the launching application, but should
->      contain some kind of namespacing and some kind of globally
->      random/unique value. The property could be called _NET_LAUNCH_ID I
->      suppose.
->  
->      Apps should put the LAUNCH_ID on all their windows throughout the 
->      lifetime of the application.
->  
->      This is for version 2.0 of the WM spec, but I'd like to get some 
->      agreement now since GNOME will likely implement before then.

i alreayd have a PID and LAUNCH_Id property workign via an LD_PRELOAD
hack the launcher uses for apps - works like a charm (XCreateWindow,
XCreateSimpleWindow and XReparentWindow are wraped and hacked to
forcibly set these and other properties)

->   2) Launching apps should stop displaying progress if a window 
->      is mapped with _either_ the PID/machine or the DESKTOP_LAUNCH_ID of 
->      the app being launched. If the launch ID doesn't match but the PID 
->      does, however, the PID can be ignored (since theoretically 
->      the launch ID is more reliably unique). Since the PID/machine
->      pair is still supported, the LAUNCH_ID is backward compatible 
->      with e.g. KDE 2.0 apps.
->  
->   3) We standardize on MapNotify=true as an indicator in .desktop
->      files that the launched app is expected to set at least the PID
->      and machine properties, and is expected to open at least one
->      window.
->  
->      Which reminds me that we need to get the .desktop spec written 
->      down...
->  
->  What do people think?
->  
->  Havoc
->  
->  
->  
->  _______________________________________________
->  wm-spec-list mailing list
->  wm-spec-list gnome org
->  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/wm-spec-list

-- 
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The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster rasterman com     raster valinux com
                                    raster enlightenment org raster linux com
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