[Geany] Re: The way we handle the FIFO.

[Nexu]

On Mon, 2006-07-24 at 13:49 -0300, Alexandre Moreira wrote:

>         Right now, whenever the user opens a new empty instance of
>         geany, geany checks out to see if the FIFO exists, and if it
>         does, it asks the user what to do, if it should skip launching
>         or if it should delete the pipe and open. 
>         
>         But I think asking the user is rather annoying, and would like
>         to give Geany the ability to try to connect to the pipe, send
>         a ping message wait for, say, 3 or 5 seconds (enough time for
>         a process to reply a pipe ping message) and if it doesnt
>         reply, deletes the pipe and runs itsel. If it does reply, we
>         skip launching and raise the old instance. 
>         
>  so the question is not about the achievability of the feature in
> Win32 anymore, but on the actual merits of the feature. 

As an user, i think these 2 choices are choices between 2 evil.

>From my point of view the pro and cons of asking the user.
Pro:
        - User only have to click and Geany starts
Cons:
        - User _must_ click something before Geany starts
        - User might be confused why its necessary to answer such
        question and what it means.

>From my points of view the pro and cons of the delay.
Pro:
        - No more dialog at start-up after a crash
Cons:
        - User might be confused why Geany is not responsive at start-up
        (after a crash)

Now consider the main user target group (at-least that is what i assume,
correct me if i am wrong on this) are mostly programmers or at least
more experienced computer users. I think the cons of the dialog is not
necessary 'confusing' and better than a delay where Geany is 'idle'.

As a suggestion, perhaps you could merge these 2 ideas. Instead of a
dialog which needs input. Change it into a dialog with a message Geany
is trying to connect to the existing FIFO with a "cancel" button which
deletes the current FIFO and starts up, or wait where after X seconds
(display count down perhaps to inform the user how long left) of time
out and not able to reconnect to existing FIFO and delete it and make a
new one.

Regards,

Nex