Current desktop detection / app access ...

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Mark,

On Fri, 2004-05-07 at 13:39 +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote: 
> 	I've had a request for something like this before in gnome-session. It
> worried me then, and it still worries me now.

	Why - particularly ?

> 	In most cases, I think there are better solutions to these types of
> problems than switching your behaviour based on the desktop environment
> you're logged into.

	Well - wrt. toolkit integration, it's important to integrate with gtk+
under Gnome/Rox/FooBaa(there are more here I belive), and Qt under
KDE/(whatever). The existing toolkit sniffing stuff is unbelievably
horrid - what alternative are you suggesting ? the DESKTOP=foo:baa idea
at least has the merit of keeping the smaller/leeter non-Gnome/KDE
desktops happy wrt. integration.

>  I don't know about your problems specifically and I
> suspect there may *not* be a better way, but I'm loathe to create a
> generic cop-out mechanism for everyone who comes up against these types
> of problems.
...
>   + $DESKTOP_OPEN environment variable contains the name of the "open"
>     script which should be used under this desktop environment
> 
>   + desktop-open script would just launch the script specified by 
>     $DESKTOP_OPEN falling back to the vendor specific one if not found.

	Right; I guess I just don't see how that's really different from the
DESKTOP=foo:baa suggestion, except that it really only solves the 2nd
(launching) problem and not the 1st (toolkit detection) issue.

	Of course, if this isn't going to get into gnome-session, I'll give up
now ;-) but I'd like to understand your unease in more detail,

	Regards,

		Michael.

-- 
 michael at ximian.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot