Re: Multiple instances of Abi


Subject: Re: Multiple instances of Abi
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Sun Aug 19 2001 - 14:16:45 CDT


At 04:23 PM 8/19/01 +0000, David Chart wrote:
>Nils said that we should use an existing instance of Abi if there is
>one, and that doing otherwise is a bug.
>
>It's only a bug if we really aren't using SDI.

Yep. We aren't using SDI, and for an MSDI application, this would be a
pretty annoying bug. This is already implemented for Win32, and way back
when (IIRC) Shaw had some pretty reasonable ideas way of how to implement it
on Unix. If that work never got completed, by all means file a bug.

The whole point of being an MSDI app is to aggregate together a bunch of
SDI-like documents so that you can do certain operations on them all as a
set.

I've not seen any use cases where it would be preferable to have two MSDI
instances running in parallel. Instead, each new document launched should
use OS-specific means to detect and reuse the existing instance, so that the
cross-document features (autosave, window menu, duplicate detection, etc.)
all Just Work.

>If we aren't using SDI, then 'Close' should *never* quit the
>application. The application is something over and above its documents.
>So, if the multiple instances behaviour is a bug, then the close
>behaviour is a bug. (And vice versa.)

Ah, the MDI bias creeps out again. ;-)

>Besides, I don't think Abi determines how many instances of itself are
>running; I think that's an OS job. I know the Mac won't let you run more
>than one instance of an application.

That's a platform-specific job. It's harder on Unix, already done on
Windows, and I'm glad to hear that it shouldn't be much of a problem for Hub.

>(Sorry about breaking the thread, but the reply was going to altogether
>too many people, and Evolution is a bit braindead about trimming
>addresses. Or, at least, I can't figure out how to do it neatly.)

Thanks. That thread was getting brutal, and it's always nice to have people
split out subthreads explicitly. :-)
Paul



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