Features wishlist for xfce 4.1

[Don Christensen]

Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> Don Christensen wrote:
>>
>>Actually, while I'm thinking about it, it would also be really nice to
>>have a way to run multiple instances of the Xfce DE out of the same home
>>directory (ie, configuration directory).  I run at least one VNC server
>>on my desktop at work in addition to the console.  The console consists
>>of two monitors (non-Xinerama) with different resolutions, and I run the
>>VNC server at yet another resolution.  I prefer my VNC DE to be fairly
>>minimal so that it is fast over a DSL connection, but my console is
>>much more decorative.  Does the session manager handle this?  I would
>>think not, since all of the config files would have to be managed as
>>part of a session, but I haven't tried it.  I don't know best how to
>>support this, but it would be nice if such support were considered
>>when thinking about the design of the various components.
> 
> 
> You can run several instances of Xfce from the same home directory, but you 
> have to use another ~/.xfce4 for each of these instances. You can achieve this 
> by setting the XFCE4HOME environment variable to "$HOME/.xfce4-home" and 
> "$HOME/.xfce4-vnc" or whatever prior to starting xfce4-session (note, that the 
> session manager does not take the XFCE4HOME variable into account any longer, 
> but uses the locations mentioned by the XDG basedir spec instead, but the 
> session data is saved in a per-display way).
> 
> As a side note: The new session manager provides the ability to have several 
> sessions around. This offers some interesting possibilities. For example, on 
> my primary notebook I have two sessions "Default" and "Work". "Default" is a 
> multi-screen session which I start when I'm at home where I have a second 
> monitor connected to my docking station, and "Work" is a single-screen session 
> which I use when I'm at work where I have no 2nd monitor for the notebook.

Dredging this up from about five months ago...

What is the current status of running multiple instances of Xfce4?  I'm
using latest CVS.  Ideally, I could maintain a whole separate set of configs
on a per-display basis.  For example, myhost:0.0 and myhost:0.1 would use
one config, while myhost:2.0 could use another config.  I would like to have
different panel layout, different background, probably even a different theme.

I'm hesitant to just "try it out" because I've been burned by Gnome before
where running the second instance hosed my config files.  Is this something
that should work across all the apps, some of the apps, or none?

Thanks,
-Don

-- 
Don Christensen       Senior Software Development Engineer
djc at cisco.com         Cisco Systems, Santa Cruz, CA
   "It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now."