Re: rfe: seamless windows integration

[Harold L Hunt II <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

Jack Tanner wrote:
> Harold L Hunt II wrote:
>
> > Thanks.  Let me tell you, we already have a laundry list of dream 
> > features.  We just need people to start working on them.
>
>
> Harold,
>
> Thanks. If I wanted to hear you be dismissive and condescending, I 
> could've just gone back and read the list archive.

Dismissive and condescending?  No, that was not my intention, sorry that 
you got that impression.

> I'm not a developer, but I am a user interested in the development of 
> this project, and I'm doing what I can to contribute through testing and 
> reporting bugs. Moreover, I have a fair amount of academic traning in 
> human-computer interaction and user experience engineering, and my 
> suggestions are based on a thought-out analysis.

I don't doubt that you have plenty of training.

However, have you read your suggestions and talked to some programmers 
about them?  Here, lets take a look.  [Yes, now you should be intrepting 
my remarks as generally pissy, snotty, dismissive, and condescending].

1. X should run as a service. There's no reason for it to run as a 
user-launched app.

This really doesn't matter and, in fact, is probably incorrect. 
Cygwin/XFree86 needs to interact with the display (else you could use 
Xvfb), so running it as a service that won't always have a desktop 
connected is pointless.  Furthermore, a machine shared by multiple users 
(like a Terminal Services server) will not be able to service all users 
with a single instance of XFree86 running.  Another point is that, I 
believe, services that interact with the desktop need to run under an 
actual user account and it would be silly to have XFree86 running under 
'bill' when 'steve' is logged in.

Besides, this could be done with a simple shortcut in the Startup group 
in the Start menu.  In fact, that should be done and had all of the bugs 
worked out before anyone talks any further of services.


2. All X client application on one's machine should have shortcuts 
associated with them in the start menu, and these shortcuts should be 
created automatically during installation.

This is icing on the cake.  This is the kind of thing that Microsoft 
hires 500 college interns to write in the summer because it takes a hell 
of a lot of time and attention to detail to get it 'right', whereas the 
overall benefit is very small in comparison.

Furthermore, this requires interacting with the Cygwin setup developers. 
 You think I am mean?

3. Exiting X (e.g., by stopping the service) should list all cygwin 
processes that were launched under X and prompt the user to terminate 
them. For example, an ssh-agent launched from an xterm should be killed 
automatically.

Huh?  Exiting X right now kills all connected clients.  There is already 
an "Are you sure?" warning dialog.  Free software is all about bang for 
the buck; the above feature might be nice, but it only matters to 
marketroids.

> Enmity aside, it wouldn't take too long to actually consider and respond 
> to what I suggested, and I would welcome discussion.

Yes it would.  It took me like 10 minutes to write this reply.  I don't 
have to be party to any and all discussions that take place on this 
list.  I wrote my reply and said my piece.  Others were free to jump all 
over your email and praise it.

Furthermore, you got a reply to your message from Earle indicating his 
interest.  So, I don't see why you have to have a beef with me when you 
appear to already have another supporter with influence.

After all of that, my position is exactly as I stated, without malice, 
in my original email: those suggestions will go on the wish list, below 
other more fundamental problems like crashes (-clipboard when copying 
large amouns of text) and startup failures (with -clipboard and 
-multiwindow).  There is still a lot of architectural work that needs to 
be done before we will start worrying about icing the cake.

Harold