Re: [PATCH mintty] Add an XWin XDG menu entry

[Michael DePaulo <mikedep333@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 4:00 PM, Thomas Wolff <towo@towo.net> wrote:
> Am 07.07.2015 um 13:47 schrieb Yaakov Selkowitz:
>>
>> On Tue, 2015-07-07 at 11:47 +0200, Thomas Wolff wrote:
>>>
>>> On 07.07.2015 01:12, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> Thomas, could you please ship a new release with this patch ASAP?
>>>
>>> Are you sure this is desired? Mintty isn't related to X Windows;
>>
>> Well, not for a full X desktop, and that's the reason for the
>> OnlyShowIn.  But within the context of a multiwindow session it makes
>> sense to provide this option.
>
> OK, anyone else to approve this? Sorry I'm asking but some people might
> think it's alien in an X menu.
> (Would that addition actually pass without a mintty dependency on xdg?
> Otherwise, since mintty is in cygwin-base, xdg itself could also include the
> entry.)
> Thomas

I think this makes sense because:
1. Many people prefer mintty over X11 terminals.
2. Many non-technical users do not understand what X11 is. They
probably just know that they they can launch Cygwin "Apps" from this
taskbar menu, and the Cygwin terminal is seemingly another Cygwin
"App". Believe me, I have seen misconceptions about X11 at work, even
from users who use terminals. [1]
3. From an end-user's perspective, mintty isn't significantly
different from an X11 app in MultiWindow mode. For example, mintty has
native window decorations like most X11 apps do, you can share
clipboard between mintty and X11 apps, etc.

[1]. A user was using a proprietary Windows X server with XDMCP, and
she thought that the remote machine's login screen (display manager's
greeter), desktop environment, terminal emulator, etc was part of the
X server. She was amazed that they did not change when I migrated her
to Cygwin XWin with XDMCP. (Don't worry, I later migrated all my users
to X2Go or X11 forwarded over SSH.)