[200] in Athena User Interface
Re: Session mgmt, MOTDs, HOTDs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Wed Jun 21 05:16:23 2000
Message-Id: <200006210916.FAA12321@No-Whammies.mit.edu>
To: tb@MIT.EDU (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
Cc: aui@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: The events that comprise the history of the universe.
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 05:16:19 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
> I thought "launch on startup" was the method used to achieve
> "leave...up...for your next login".
Yes, it is. That's the problem. I guess a more detailed explanation
is in order.
So let me slip for a moment into the Windows realm, which I think has
an intuitive paradigm (though a somewhat opaque implementation).
(About 80% of Athena users who responded to recent surveys report that
they are comfortable/familiar with the Windows interface.)
So I sit down at my computer, and I say, "Hey! I've got all these
cool programs that I use a lot. Wouldn't it be nice if they started
up automatically every time I log in?" So I play with the Start menu
or Explorer or whatever, and I find this special place called Startup.
So I make a list which contains pointers to my favorite web browser
and my CPU monitor and ICQ. Every time I log in, these programs start
up in the specified way; if I want to change the startup sequence, I
normally would need to revisit this special place. (My pet peeve
about Windows 9X here is that all sorts of programs muck with my
startup sequence without my permission, and sometimes aren't
user-visible.)
Anyway, one day, several months later, I'm working in W20 on a big
project, and I have twenty different C files open on my desktop. I
realize the last SafeRide is about to leave for Boston, but I'd rather
not have to reopen all my windows when I get home. Or maybe I'm on my
lunch hour, and have to run to class before I finish what I'm working
on. It would be nice to have a little button on the logout dialog
which says "remember all the windows I have open right now, and open
them again next time I log in."
Gnome as it stands has the latter, "short-term memory" feature, which
is nice, except it doesn't work for windows you open from the command
line. Unfortunately, this is also the mechanism by which I'm supposed
to get the former "long-term startup persistance" funtionality.
Combine that with windows you've opened from the command line, which
aren't remembered, and you've got a real mess.
If push comes to shove, I'd say make some sane way of specifying
startup sequence, and punt the "short-term memory" feature. (I would
say don't do it unless we can solve the unmanaged window problem.)
Tonight, I sat down and tried to use the Session Properties capplet to
make a sane startup sequence to replace my .startup.X. (From survey
data alone, I'd estimate 30-60% of Athena users are interested in
making this sort of customization - probably more would be if it were
a lot easier to do than it is now. Note that editing a text file by
hand is a high barrier to this sort of task down for the novice third+
of the population.)
I don't know about the Debian, but in the current RedHat-AUI build of
the capplet, the "Browse Currently Running Programs" dialog is the
only interface to session-managed startup. There's no way in this
dialog to add programs to the sequence, though you can remove them.
It looks like whatever programs you had running when you last chose
"Save this setup" in the logout dialog are what's here. But that's
an entirely un-obvious connection, and in my opinion, really messed
up.
I guess the "non-session-managed" list is supposed to be "things that
start up every login no matter what." The only way to add a program
here, though, is to give it an explicit command or filename, which
implies that maybe this is a place for non-Gnome things to run. Users
should be able to pull programs off the taskbar and panel menus and
stick them here.
You can tell Gnome to save your "setup" - i.e. what session-managed,
Gnome-started programs are running - at every login. In this state,
"session-managed" programs are those that persist from login to login
and change as you start and finish tasks. Without that auto-save
feature, they become "all the things you had running last time you
saved the state of the world on logout." On some level, this is very
close to "all the things you told me you wanted to run on every
startup last time you bothered talking to me (the capplet)" and thus
creates redundancy and confusion.
There's also the matter of system programs, which I always want to run
(and if I don't there are other, more proper ways to stop them from
running) vs. my own startup programs, which I might change
occassionally. A good interface will not put these two things on the
same list in such a way that they might be easily confused.
-B.
P.S. - Comments on MOTDs and HOTDs?
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Christopher Beland - http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/contact.html
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