How does ksmserver start applications?

[Roland Seuhs]

> > > On Tuesday 27 August 2002 12:26, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> Yes, it's handled by KWin. KWin asks X to redirect window mapping to KWin, 
> and before the window is actually shown, KWin applies geometry, etc. saved 
> from the session. And no, your application cannot do the same, it'd have to 
> ask KWin to do it (e.g. now placing windows of newly started app on the 
> desktop they were started on is handled this way - but I guess it refuses to 
> use non-existing virtual desktop).

I don't understand, why can't my app tell KWin?

I experimented with kstart and I successfully opened apps on desktop 17 (invisible) and brought them back to a visible using their window-id. So it should work.
I currently always use desktop 16 so I know what is going on.

> > > >  I'm not sure if I understand what exactly is the utility trying to
> > > > do, but if it's something like Mozilla's QuickLaunch or whatever they
> > > > call it, it'd be probably better to add support for this directly in
> > > > Konqueror (IMHO it doesn't make sense for any other app), because I
> > > > think you just cannot reliably make it work with any app just by
> > > > fidlling with it from outside.
> > >
> > > ... and support for it already exists in Konqueror.
> > > Just add "konqueror -silent" to your Autostart folder, or to startkde,
> > > and make sure you choose the "always reuse the existing process"
> > > option. This will start a konq process during KDE startup, not showing
> > > any window, and will use it to open any konq windows after that.

Well, the problem is that it works only with Konqueror, but I'd like to use it for Mozilla and especially StarOffice, too. Other people will probably like to use it for other programs.
On next-generation computers with 2GB or more RAM, you probably want to use it for *all* apps. Disk-drives get bigger but not much faster, so app-start-up of nontrivial graphical applications time will *NEVER* be instantaneous (<50ms) using conventional methods. (Although cashing isn't that unconventional either, it happens all the time)
IMO, it's the way computers should behave. You click an icon and a window pops up - immediately. Heck, we currently have 2002 and no operating system behaves like this, isn't that a shame?. It would be great if KDE could change that - for ALL apps.

Also I think that such a feature does not belong into the app, the DE should handle it, IMO. Implementing that on application-level seems like a massive duplication of effort.

If I can somehow overcome the focus-problem, I think this app will make KDE usable for many users which find KDE currently too slow.
A KDE/Linux system caches data on so many levels (CPU, disk-cache in RAM, disk-cache on HDD) why not cache whole apps to eliminate start-up time once and for all?
Also, my app doesn't interfere with any other things in KDE.

Roland


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