"xfce4-panel -x" ends session when xfce4-session is not in use

[David Mohr]

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 10:12 AM, Mads Michelsen <chochem at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been spending some time figuring out the various parts of xfce4 and
> recently tried starting xfce4 without using the session manager as suggested
> in the xinitrc script (it didn't say how to 'not use it' so I just commented
> the lines starting with the one saying "Run xfce4-session if installed")
> Sort of partly because I was curious, partly because I prefer the control in
> starting by script as opposed to session saving. Everything went well and
> startup was as expected by the remaining part of the xinitrc script.
> However, something I do not understand: I occasionally want to 'turn off'
> the panels to gain screen space. Since you can't hide the panels, I've added
> a keyboard shortcut to start and exit the panels, 'xfce4-panel' and
> 'xfce4-panel -x' respectively, which worked pretty well while the session
> manager was running. However, when it isn't, exiting the panel, drops the
> whole session on the floor and I'm returned to gdm. I figure I just don't
> udnerstand how the various parts do what jobs but I fail to see the logic
> here? The window manager and the mcs thingy, whatever it is that it does,
> are still runnning. So why is the panel suddenly vital?

I'm just another user, but xfce4-panel --help says:
-x, --exit      Close all panels and end the program
My guess is you're experiencing the "end the program" part ;-).

I am doing something similar to remove the panels temporarily, but I'm
just using a blunt "killall xfce4-panel", which seems to work fine for
me. Now that I think about it, I do wonder if there are cases where
this would lose recent changes to the panel configuration, but it has
never happened to me.

~David