Re: Let's hope XP doesn't keep this "one-up" on OS X!
Re: Let's hope XP doesn't keep this "one-up" on OS X!
- Subject: Re: Let's hope XP doesn't keep this "one-up" on OS X!
- From: Brian Webster <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 12:06:31 -0500
While it wouldn't be too hard to keep apps running after a user logs out,
there a whole bunch of issues that arise when running another user.
Firstly, the window server would need mods to make sure that it only display
windows that belonged to apps being run by the currently logged in user.
This wouldn't be too hard, since all the windows are double buffered, so
apps could update their buffer in the background without any ill effects on
screen.
There would also have to be quite a bit of work done in dealing with running
multiple instances of the same app. Example: user A has Mail running, and
the computer switches over to user B. User B also starts up Mail, and then
runs an Applescript that sends events to Mail. Which copy of Mail? All the
IPC stuff would have to be updated to deal with this, along with the process
manager, etc.
I believe that there would be some issues with resource-fork apps, since the
resource fork of the app needs to be open when the app is running but can't
be opened twice, so one copy can't be used to run multiple instances of the
app. Not to mention the nastiness that would occur if two instances of
Classic were started up at the same time. Ugh!
BTW, it's not clear to me from the descriptions I can find whether or not
apps under XP actually keep running in the background, or whether their
execution is suspended. I'm pretty sure it's the former, but I just can't
find any explicit confirmation of this.
--
Brian Webster
email@hidden
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~bwebster/