Re: Graceful termination again

[Sheldon Gill]

Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> On 23 Jan 2006, at 21:36, David Ayers wrote:
> > Richard Frith-Macdonald schrieb:
> > > We could finish getting the NSWorkspace class to do what it was
> > > originally designed to do ... provide the list of launched apps as
> > > supplied by the workspace manager.  That would be a small  modification
> > > to NSWorkspace and to GWorkspace.  However, we would  want some fallback
> > > option for if/when GWorkspace is not running.   Perhaps a minimal
> > > workspace manager daemon, or perhaps NSWorkspace  could write to a small
> > > database (eg a plist file in a temporary  directory) to maintain the
> > > state information.  The latter has the  advantages of not requiring an
> > > additional daemon to run (I have no  problem with daemons, but I know
> > > many people have objections to them)  and is persistent if the workspace
> > > manager is restarted (we need  that).  The former has the advantages
> > > that it would provide a testbed  and reference implementation for
> > > workspace managers.  I suppose we  could do both.

For what its worth, I think the current approach within -core is right. Minimal 
NSWorkspace. Keep it lean.

The functionality should be implemented by the desktop shell. That'd be:
- GWorkspace/WindowMaker for most
- For KDE, there'll need to be a different implementation
- Win32 needs to talk to the Shell (Explorer)

For KDE & Win32 there is no need for another daemon as there already is one 
running.

I'm pretty sure there is a GNOMEish solution, too.

> > I could very well be missing something obvious but I seems to me that
> > gdnc would be a good candidate to provide this service.
>
> If we want to put the functionality into an existing daemon, I think 
> gpbs would be the best option, as it is part of the gui/back libraries 
> (ie related to applications) while gdnc provides a service for the base 
> library.

I really think the functionality shouldn't be incorporated into either daemon 
but left for a real NSWorkspace implementation appropriate for the particular 
running desktop.

> However, if we want to provide a reference implementation that 
> developers of workspace managers can look at, I think a standalone 
> process would be better than attaching the functionality to an existing 
> daemon... and if we don't want to do that, my preference would be not to 
> bother at all ... just use an on-disk database of  the information we 
> need, and modify GWorkspace as our standard workspace manager.

A reference/sample implementation is definitely a good idea.
I also agree that modifying GWorkspace is the right way...


Regards,
Sheldon