

Re: Enabling Compiz by default?

On 8/10/07, Callum Lerwick <seg haxxed com> wrote:
> Ever tried using yumex with compiz? It ends up going grey, usually
> because I *told* it to do something, and it is *already* indicating its
> busyness with a progress meter.

I think you are absolutely wrong about the state yumex is in when it
goes grey. Its completely inactive and unresponsive..which is vastly
different than doing something in the background but the gui is still
responsive. When compiz greys a window out, the window isn't even
capable of redrawing.

I very much doubt your statement that yumex is actively telling you
its busy. There's no spinner or moving anything in that window that
you can use as an active indicator that its doing..anything. All your
left with was the last thing it drew before the UI got stuck and went
completely not responsive.

It's a known problem with non-threaded python apps in general when
doing heavy background calculations. If you were running metacity and
you wiped another window over it, the window would fail to redraw and
would look broken.

> As someone else mentioned, just because the app is busy doesn't mean its
> not still displaying valid information I'm trying to read. The grey
> thing is simply way too distracting and alarming. It calls attention to
> the window, when the reality is, I told the app to do something, and I
> don't *care* about the application until its done with its task. There
> is nothing happening that needs this much attention drawn to it.

Unless of course, the application is non-responsive because its
internally broken and the window needs to be forcible killed.
Correctly behaving graphical applications should not go
non-responsive. If they do its indicative of a problem. The fact that
you are use to seeing it happen, because you are using graphical
python applications prone to going unresponsive is more of an
indication of a problem with the limited use of threading in python
apps  threading and not the non-responsive notification.

Again... when the ui goes unresponsive...even unable to redraw
itself.. that task may NEVER finish..that task may be stuck.
Correctly functioning applications should avoid going unresponsive.

> The first time I ever experienced the window greying, my first thought
> was "Oh my god something's gone horribly wrong!". And I'm not even Aunt
> Tillie. Its an alarming indicator, when there's nothing alarming to
> indicate.

Your first thought was the correct thought. If a window goes
unresponsive, it is a potential problem. Graphical programs should
make a best effort to avoid getting into an unresponsive state.

> Whatever happened to just switching to a busy pointer shape? THAT would
> be consistent with decades old standards of GUI behavior.

But only when moused over the window.  Do you want to wait 4 hours
after an application window you aren't mousing over locks up that you
thought was doing useful work to be notified that it needs to be
forcibly killed?

-jef"It's a real shame that python-based application behavior have
made the occurance of unresponsive windows seem like a generally
acceptable practice for application that are in fact behaving
