multiple thunar instances and session management half-baked

[Dennis Heuer]

hello

i love thunar and see no option to it. that's why i'm in the need to
convince you that the current way is half-baked.

thunar even works with the old xsm - allowing for even slimmer systems.
this is rare today and great. however, generally, multiple thunar
instances are remembered correctly, it seems. though i found that at
about four instances the latter windows aren't correctly positioned (on
workspaces). however, may be of other reasons. the problem is not the
positioning but that all instances share the same configuration. the
thunar instance configured to look like a spatial view to show only
some starters looks the same like the fully configured thunar for
administrative tasks after a fresh login. this includes sorting, zoom,
etc.

i please you to save the full state of an instance because otherwise
thunar can't be used to stay open in parallel on multiple workspaces.

many thanks,
dennis heuer
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[Cory Christison-2]

Dennis Heuer wrote:

> hello
>
> i love thunar and see no option to it. that's why i'm in the need to
> convince you that the current way is half-baked.
>
> thunar even works with the old xsm - allowing for even slimmer systems.
> this is rare today and great. however, generally, multiple thunar
> instances are remembered correctly, it seems. though i found that at
> about four instances the latter windows aren't correctly positioned (on
> workspaces). however, may be of other reasons. the problem is not the
> positioning but that all instances share the same configuration. the
> thunar instance configured to look like a spatial view to show only
> some starters looks the same like the fully configured thunar for
> administrative tasks after a fresh login. this includes sorting, zoom,
> etc.
>
> i please you to save the full state of an instance because otherwise
> thunar can't be used to stay open in parallel on multiple workspaces.
>
> many thanks,
> dennis heuer
>  

I don't think the intention was for it to be 'half-baked'. I think the
developers just didn't forsee that type of usage pattern.

I feel it was rather rude to come barging in here exlaiming this
magnificent peice of software was 'half-baked.'

I feel that for general users it was very well thought out.

I think that you would have a more positive response if you would have
used the bug  tracker, and submitted this as a bug. Not claiming the
software is half-baked and useless.

Long time happy Thunar user,
 - Cory Christison
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[Dennis Heuer]

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:24:51 -0600
Cory Christison <cory.christison@...> wrote:

> I don't think the intention was for it to be 'half-baked'. I think the
> developers just didn't forsee that type of usage pattern.

which is the same. reality decides about this fact - not your
intention. i can't see why you are so angry.

>
> I feel it was rather rude to come barging in here exlaiming this
> magnificent peice of software was 'half-baked.'

what did i do??? possibly, you are too affected by your imaginary
picture of the 'magnificient' thunar? aehhm, did i end in a sect or
so??? what are you barking? thunar is not persistent in the real sense.
this may be of intend. however, then just stating your position would
be enough. why you are so angry about other positions, which you know
are quite arguable.

> I feel that for general users it was very well thought out.

don't general users open things twice for different use cases? why you
are so <assured>? be a bit more open!

> I think that you would have a more positive response if you would have
> used the bug  tracker, and submitted this as a bug.

submitting this pledge for enhancement as a bug would be barking,
from my point of view. i really don't understand your viewpoint!?

however, i refuse (bark) to use bugzilla because it still doesn't let
one at least close an account. all the bugzillas in the world still
hold old accounts under my name but with old and dead email addresses
and still sensitive personal data of mine. i don't even have the
passwords anymore to at least delete the sensitive data. this 'intend'
of the bugzilla developers was already harshly discussed (because it is
stealing the freedom from the account owner) but without concrete
result. this is why i never use bugzilla if there is a mailinglist
available. and if not, i most probably don't write at all.
freedesktop.org, for example, makes a difference because of the many
projects for which there is only one account needed and most possibly
valuable in future.

cudos to all Thuar developers. you are great - but sometimes a bit too
sensitive, i think.

best wishes,
dennis heuer
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[Jari Rahkonen]

Dennis Heuer kirjoitti:

> On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:24:51 -0600
> Cory Christison <cory.christison@...> wrote:
>
>> I don't think the intention was for it to be 'half-baked'. I think the
>> developers just didn't forsee that type of usage pattern.
>
> which is the same. reality decides about this fact - not your
> intention. i can't see why you are so angry.
>
>> I feel it was rather rude to come barging in here exlaiming this
>> magnificent peice of software was 'half-baked.'
>
> what did i do??? possibly, you are too affected by your imaginary
> picture of the 'magnificient' thunar? aehhm, did i end in a sect or
> so??? what are you barking? thunar is not persistent in the real sense.
> this may be of intend. however, then just stating your position would
> be enough. why you are so angry about other positions, which you know
> are quite arguable.
>
>> I feel that for general users it was very well thought out.
>
> don't general users open things twice for different use cases? why you
> are so <assured>? be a bit more open!

I'm sure your use case is valid if not common. If it was common, you
wouldn't be the first to complain.

>> I think that you would have a more positive response if you would have
>> used the bug  tracker, and submitted this as a bug.
>
> submitting this pledge for enhancement as a bug would be barking,
> from my point of view. i really don't understand your viewpoint!?
>
> however, i refuse (bark) to use bugzilla because it still doesn't let
> one at least close an account.

Too bad, as that's how 'requests for enhancement' work in many open
source projects. You open a bug where you describe the functionality you
find missing and set the severity to enhancement.

> all the bugzillas in the world still
> hold old accounts under my name but with old and dead email addresses
> and still sensitive personal data of mine. i don't even have the
> passwords anymore to at least delete the sensitive data. this 'intend'
> of the bugzilla developers was already harshly discussed (because it is
> stealing the freedom from the account owner) but without concrete
> result. this is why i never use bugzilla if there is a mailinglist
> available. and if not, i most probably don't write at all.
> freedesktop.org, for example, makes a difference because of the many
> projects for which there is only one account needed and most possibly
> valuable in future.

Getting a new password (or changing the email address I presume) is as
simple as sending an email to the admin.

> cudos to all Thuar developers. you are great - but sometimes a bit too
> sensitive, i think.

AFAIK Cory is not a Thunar developer (and neither am I). I do agree that
the tone of your original mail probably didn't encourage anyone to start
coding. There's simply no way someone would want to do you a favor by
fixing your personal pet peeve if your only argument is that the
software is 'half-baked' if they don't. But maybe you don't see the
problem because of a language barrier or something...

> best wishes,
> dennis heuer

- Jari
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[Dennis Heuer]

On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:53:20 +0200
Jari Rahkonen <jari.rahkonen@...> wrote:


> Getting a new password (or changing the email address I presume) is as
> simple as sending an email to the admin.

you don't get the problem. the admin can only re-fresh an old account
but not <close> it. bugzilla does not allow the user to shut down his
account. btw., this is against most national laws. it is also against
international law. though the user can't expect to get his entries
deleted, the closure of his account is his right. bugzilla treats this
right with ignorance and a selfish position of the bugzilla developers
who just don't want the user to do this (by original statements).

> There's simply no way someone would want to do you a favor by
> fixing your personal pet peeve if your only argument is that the
> software is 'half-baked' if they don't. But maybe you don't see the
> problem because of a language barrier or something...

i understand what you mean but can't agree. to be truthful, more than
90% of 'magnificious' desktop software in the world is, and god knows,
half-baked (if not crap) because, it seems, the intends of the
developers are so small that not even functioning well in an
environment of certain standard (X) existing decades before this tools
is in focus.

if you see supporting the environment as a personal pet peeve, there's
something wrong with your attitude. you could have argued that Thunar
is for XFCE and that's it. however, how you argue is only strange.

am not expecting anything anymore from a desktop

bye,
dennis
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[Jari Rahkonen]

Dennis Heuer kirjoitti:

> On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:53:20 +0200
> Jari Rahkonen <jari.rahkonen@...> wrote:
>
>
>> Getting a new password (or changing the email address I presume) is as
>> simple as sending an email to the admin.
>
> you don't get the problem. the admin can only re-fresh an old account
> but not <close> it. bugzilla does not allow the user to shut down his
> account. btw., this is against most national laws. it is also against
> international law. though the user can't expect to get his entries
> deleted, the closure of his account is his right. bugzilla treats this
> right with ignorance and a selfish position of the bugzilla developers
> who just don't want the user to do this (by original statements).

So you're just being nit-picky? As you said, you can easily remove any
sensitive personal information, or not even provide it in the first
place. The last time I checked, the only thing the Xfce bugzilla asks
for is a valid e-mail address, which is easy to come by and hardly
considered sensitive information by the standards of any law. But I see
this is a matter you take personally, so I'll refrain from discussing it
further.

>> There's simply no way someone would want to do you a favor by
>> fixing your personal pet peeve if your only argument is that the
>> software is 'half-baked' if they don't. But maybe you don't see the
>> problem because of a language barrier or something...
>
> i understand what you mean but can't agree. to be truthful, more than
> 90% of 'magnificious' desktop software in the world is, and god knows,
> half-baked (if not crap) because, it seems, the intends of the
> developers are so small that not even functioning well in an
> environment of certain standard (X) existing decades before this tools
> is in focus.
>
> if you see supporting the environment as a personal pet peeve, there's
> something wrong with your attitude. you could have argued that Thunar
> is for XFCE and that's it. however, how you argue is only strange.
>
> am not expecting anything anymore from a desktop

Anything that doesn't implement and expose the standards to the tiniest
detail (ie. pretty much every piece of software ever) is crap?
Supporting whatever functionality the environment offers is nice, true,
but providing a good user experience for most of us is often even more
important. That's pretty much the gist of the Xfce philosophy as I
understand it.

However that's probably not relevant in this case, as the most likely
reason for Thunar's incomplete session support is that no-one has had
the time, energy and/or will to implement it properly.

What I meant by the 'pet peeve' comment was that there are surely
several things Thunar doesn't do the way someone wants it to or
standards it doesn't implement, but any amount of complaining isn't
likely to fix the situation.

I'm sure you understand that unless you're willing and able to do the
work, you need to convince someone else to do it. Emphasis on the word
'convince', which is very distinct from 'order' or 'shame'.

> bye,
> dennis

- Jari
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[Jannis Pohlmann-3]

Hey,

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 14:14:10 +0100
Dennis Heuer <dh@...> wrote:

> hello
>
> i love thunar and see no option to it. that's why i'm in the need to
> convince you that the current way is half-baked.

That sounds like you're in a catastrophic situation. Poor you ;)
 
> thunar even works with the old xsm - allowing for even slimmer
> systems. this is rare today and great. however, generally, multiple
> thunar instances are remembered correctly, it seems. though i found
> that at about four instances the latter windows aren't correctly
> positioned (on workspaces). however, may be of other reasons.

AFAIK, the positioning of windows on certain workspaces is out of the
scope of the individual applications. That's the window manager's
responsiblity.

It would be nice if you could tell the window manager to remember
properties like workspace, position and size for some windows.
Enlightenment supports that and I really like it.

> the
> problem is not the positioning but that all instances share the same
> configuration. the thunar instance configured to look like a spatial
> view to show only some starters looks the same like the fully
> configured thunar for administrative tasks after a fresh login. this
> includes sorting, zoom, etc.

First of all, you're confusing something here: there is just one
instance of Thunar. What you think are instances are in fact just
windows of that one instance.

In Thunar all windows are treated equal. There's a reason for it and
it's called simplicity. I wouldn't mind to add more window information
to the session bits there's a problem ...

> i please you to save the full state of an instance because otherwise
> thunar can't be used to stay open in parallel on multiple workspaces.

... the full state? First, that phrase needs a definition. What defines
the full state of a window (again: not an instance)? I can think of a
dozen of things that may be of interest here:

  - window size
  - window position (partly out of scope)
  - workspace (out of scope)
  - location (already implemented)
  - view type (detail, icon or list view)
  - side pane type (none, tree, bookmarks)
  - location bar type (pathbar, toolbar)
  - hidden files displayed or not
  - the full state of the tree side pane if it's used
  - open dialogs maybe
  - ...

I suppose there are a few more aspects I didn't mention yet. To make
Thunar aware of these in the context of session management, we would
have to

  - collect and save this information for each window
  - add command line parameters for every bit of information so that
    the session manager can create windows exactly as they were before

As you can (hopefully) see we'd have add a lot of code just to get that
right. I suppose that most people use Thunar like this: they open a
window, they do something (copying/renaming/whatever) and they close it
again when they're done. Given that scenario, I don't think it's worth
all the hassle to make Thunar restore all windows exactly as they were
before when resuming a session.

  - Jannis


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