modularity of DISPLAYMANAGERS

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 16:45:15 +0200, Rudolf Kastl <che666 at uni.de> wrote:
> The switchdesk guis need a rewrite. so if theres just a bit sanity there
> could be change in the way DMs are handled too and you could even reuse
> the same gui.

First of all.. switchdesk i think is aimed primarily at being a tool
for individual users to set their prefered desktop environment inside
a user's home directory. Changing which DM is used is system-wide and
would need administration privs to work. Personally I do not think its
a good idea to add this feature to the switchdesk interface.  You are
thinking one user, one system. I think its very important when
thinking about gui's to think multi-user, and make sure there is a
distinction between what non-admin users see in terms of tools and
what admin users see as tools, becuase I certaintly don't want
end-user seeing or interacting with the gui for DM selection, i want
to lock that down so only users with admin privs see that.

But yeah the script logic controlling how prefdm works is mighty... crusty.
But its just script logic.  I'm sure if you wanted to try your hand at
rebuilding the /etc/X11/prefdm script to make it easier to allow for
additional DM's that would not be unwelcomed coding work. Once you
have an example script replacement or patch to the current prefdm
submitted to bugzilla, there might be more to talk about in terms of a
gui. My guess is the lack of more generalized prefdm logic is partly
if not mostly manpower/priority constraints related. So volunteering
to rebuild the prefdm script and submit it for review might move this
discussion forward.

-jef