xfce4-mixer has no session handler

[Christian Dywan]

Am Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:49:26 -0800
schrieb "Brian J. Tarricone" <bjt23 at cornell.edu>:

> On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:01:09 +0100 jp.guillemin wrote:
> 
> > Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> > > jp.guillemin wrote:
> > >   
> > >> Hi,
> > >>
> > >> The xfce4-mixer window has no session support. I mean : if you
> > >> launch it several times (ie : by double clicking on the mixer
> > >> panel applet) you get 2 or more instances of the mixer
> > >> simultaneously.
> > >>
> > >> Obviously an application that has no reason to be loaded more
> > >> than once should have session support to detect that an instance
> > >> is already running and ignore repetitive launches.
> > >>     
> > >
> > > This has nothing to do with session support
> >
> > You are of course free to call this feature with your own words. I
> > call this kind of feature "session support". What's important is
> > that you understood what I meant :)
> 
> No, "session support" has well-defined meaning in X11... and this is
> not it.  Please learn the correct terminology.
> 
> (... regardless of the fact that your use of the word "session"
> doesn't make any sense in this context.)
> 
> > > , and... why does it matter? 
> > >   
> > It's not a "must have", but it would be cleaner.
> 
> Then file a feature request bugs.xfce.org.
> 
> > >   Maybe sometimes you do want another instance of it, or maybe you
> > > just don't care either way.
> > >   
> > Some people care, some other don't ... most GUI features can be
> > dropped if you only keep important ones...
> 
> Well, Jannis gave a perfect use case (if probably a minority one)
> where you'd actively want to have two of them open.  So forcing only
> one unique instance of the app would make that impossible... unless
> you add a retarded preference to disable that behavior (I mean,
> really, what sane preferences dialog has an "Allow only one instance
> of this application" option).  Of course, you could also add a
> command-line switch, but that's not particularly discoverable...

Actually there are a cuple of apps with such an option. And there are
cases where you actually need that. However in those cases it's not at
all about a second instance but, like you said, about whether or not
you need an additional window. So it would be correct to say that an
"Allow only one instance" option is a lame workaround for the lack of
proper behaviour, and command line options.

So in this case, I recommend a feature request, with a patch that makes
the mixer aware of the running instance paired with a command line
switch to run additional *windows*, not instances.

ciao,
    Christian