Wayland Window Management Proposal

[Mike Paquette]

This will pretty quickly result in toolkits, or at least app skeletons, doing something like:

	(void)max_unresponsive_time(MAX_DOUBLE);

I had an 'automatic wait cursor' feature in a window system I did, which when an app failed to process pending events for a few seconds, would automatically display a 'wait cursor', the dreaded Spinning Pizza of Death.   Naturally, app developers were insulted that the system would dare indicate that their app was being unresponsive, and demanded such an API.  Being the annoying curmudgeon that I am, I refused to allow apps to feign being responsive when they really weren't, as that wound up annoying users even more.  (System cues shouldn't lie to users.)

I did use the same mechanism to post notifications to subscribing apps when an application became unresponsive.  This allows an app that shows the status of other apps, like the Unity launch bar, to listen for notifications of unresponsive apps, specially badge unresponsive apps if desired, or offer a 'force quit' contextual menu item.

  Mike Paquette

On May 13, 2011, at 4:11 AM, Mak Nazečić-Andrlon wrote:

> Indeed. But how about this: the client sends the compositor a hint
> stating its maximum unresponsiveness interval, and sends keep-alive
> messages when idle. If the app doesn't respond in time, and the user
> tries to interact with it, the compositor can offer to kill it (or
> something).
> 
> Mak
> 
> On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Daniel Stone <daniel at fooishbar.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 06:22:01PM +0200, Michal Suchanek wrote:
>>> You can't expect that every single client is high-priority and lag-free.
>> 
>> Run better clients, then? Or stop trying to micro-optimise for the case
>> of pressing the close button on an unresponsive client?
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Daniel, who wants the bikeshed to be violet
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