Re: Whether to issue Delete or Close to properly shutdown a window

[Mikhael G. <mi...@ho...>]

On 24 Sep 2010 20:39:58 +0100, Thomas Adam wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 10:08:52PM +0300, Mikhael Goikhman wrote:
> > I am not very strong about this issue, although I prefer a less
> > destructive Delete in buttons than Close. But maybe I miss some
> > serious use case that caused to such change. What do others think?
> 
> This is one of those expose problems which X11 inherently presents
> to the user.  As a user, I don't care if my window is deleted or
> destroyed -- just that it goes away when I ask it to close.  The
> problem there though, is because there's these two very different
> methods, I start to _have_ to care more if said application
> suddenly throws a wobbly and sits there IO bound, hosing my machine
> with 100% CPU.
> 
> But that's a side-issue to fvwm-themes appearing to Do The Right
> Thing (tm) which is ultimately to close my window.  I currently
> have no wa to do that if the application in question doesn't listen
> to WM_DELETE, and as a user I am left baffled and confused -- I
> just want the window to close.
> 
> Get fvwm-themes to do The Right Thing (tm) -- at least Close is
> graceful in trying Delete before Destroy -- and that's the way it
> should be.  We're not losing out here, we're just ensuring those
> Brain Dead (tm) applications go away.  Any side-effects coming from
> a WM_DESTROY aren't FVWM's fault, and legitimately, FVWM is still
> Doing The Right Thing (tm) -- such observations in Brain Dead
> Applications (tm) aren't anything to do with us.  After all, we
> tried to Do The Right Thing (tm) via Close, and that's the best we
> can and /should/ do.  :)

I can't agree that the Right Thing is to Destroy by default. I think
the way we had until now was Right. To let user a chance to know this
window can't be closed easily, only destroyed, leading to potential
problems (the aplication still continues to run, without a window).

It is also not correct that you didn't have a way to close (destroy)
a window, there are many ways. 1) Menu button / Close. 2) Alt-F4 (or
Alt-Shift-F4). 3) Click right mouse button on the root, select
Delete, Close or Destroy. 4) Invoike the long windows operation menu
on a window, ("More...") and see that Delete is disabled, but Close
and Destroy are not.

For me the current way (before the cvs change) seems Right.

> I'd bet you no one's going to even notice the change.  :)

How about the other way? Did the current way present any problems
to the user; for which applications exactly?

Maybe the solution is to explicitely list all known programs that
both do not accept Delete and are ended when any of their window
is destroyed. For them do: ThisWindow (KnownProgram) Destroy
(or Close), but for all other programs do Delete, not Destroy.

Do you have a list of programs that would benefit from Destroy?

Regards,
Mikhael.