xfce4-session: some observations (0.0.17)

[Benedikt Meurer]

On Sun, 06, Jul 2003, Matti Rendahl wrote:

> Hi,

Hey Matti,

> I have some observations:
> 
> 1) When quiting I think it would be useful to be able not to save
>    the current setup even if I have choosen "Automatically save 
>    session on logout" in settings. Couldn't the setting
>    "Automatically..." just control if the checkbox is checked or
>    not on the quit dialog? 

IMHO if I say, "Autosave session", I expect the session to do it, not
offering another checkbox to confirm what I said previously.

> 2) I noticed with evolution 1.4 that if I don't quit evolution manually
>    my changes - read/deleted messages - will not be saved. I don't know
>    if this is an evolution bug, or xcfce4-sm that should tell the
>    clients to terminate in some other way?

Thats definetly an evolution bug. The sm sends every app a
SaveYourself message (as long as you say "Save session"), what the app
does to save its state is up to the app.

> 3) Is the order the session is restarted "random"?. I noticed this as I
>    launch xmms from gkrellm. Every now and then xmms will be started
>    before gkrellm, and then I will have an open xmms on my desktop.
>    Normally gkrellm will start and hide it. This is of course ok, as
>    xmms will register when started from gkrellm and for the sm look like
>    any other  application. (I don't know how gkrellm does to hide
>    xmms from the system, it will not even show up in the taskbar 
>    or iconbox. Actually, I just checked the sessions/xfwm4-* file, 
>    xmms is not in that either. Suppose gkrellm is doing lot of
>    strange stuff.) The difference is that if xfce4-sm started
>    apps in the same order as they where started xmms would not be
>    visible on the screen. (I'm trying to figure out some other case
>    where the startup order would matter, but can't. So this is probably
>    a non-issue :-) But anyway, should one expect xfce4-sm to restart
>    applications in some specific order?

The session manager uses the _GSM_Priority property to determine the
order in which clients are to be restarted. Lower priorities come
first (e.g. xfwm4 has usually the lowest priority, so its started
first). If a client does not set this priority, a default priority of
50 is assumed. Since this property is a gnome extension, not all apps
set this, and you might have lots of apps with priority of 50 around,
which might then seem to be started in a "random" order (in reality
its sorted using g_list_sort).

Your xmms problem occurs, because xmms is session aware. Therefore
it'll be restarted by the session manager. You could get around this
using a simple script to launch xmms:

#!/bin/sh
export SESSION_MANAGER=""
xmms

That'll prevent xmms from connecting to the session manager.

> --matti

Benedikt

> PS the .xfce4/sessions/xfwm4-* file, what is that used for?

It is used to store window settings, saved when the session ends, e.g. so
windows are restored on the correct desktop.

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