Versions & mass-appeal

[Francois Gouget]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:

> On October 30, 2002 01:57 am, Ender wrote:
> >      - Many apps do not work without Desktop enabled. This is far worse
> > than it sounds, because most newbies try managed non-desktop first. People
> > think WINE should be able to do seemless intergration. Then when an
> > application hangs, they think it's incompatible and give up. However in
> > many cases the Application will work fine in Desktop mode. BAD, these apps
> > should either be made to work... or non-desktop mode should be removed!
>
> IMO desktop mode exists only because our integration is not very good.
> It should die sooner, rather than later, it's just a big hack. So we should
> rather focus on getting apps to work in non-desktop more, rather then
> resurrecting the silly desktop option.

I think desktop mode is useful in some circumstances like when you want
to prevent an application from taking over the whole screen (typically
installers or the PowerPoint viewer). Unfortunately it is currently
broken in that if a process runs in a desktop and calls CreateProcess,
the new process is run in a new desktop. That's really not the way it
should work. But I would rather see this fixed than scrap desktop mode
entirely.

Of course desktop mode is much less important than good behavior in
managed mode. But getting managed mode to work really well will require
some cooperation from the window manager which means we need the people
who understand the issue to contribute to the window manager standards.


-- 
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
                         "Utilisateur" (nom commun) :
        Mot utilisé par les informaticiens en lieu et place d'"idiot".