What to do with application that only works in some desktops

[Göran Uddeborg]

Hello!

I would like to ask for some help what to do with
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1324881  I've been
pondering it for some time, but I know too little to know what to do.

It's about the old amusement xpenguins.  (A program showing small
penguins walking on the windows and jumping between them.)  As can be
seen in the bug report, it doesn't show anything in e.g. Gnome.  From
what I understand this is because Gnome doesn't show the actual X root
window.  It has a second window covering the entire screen as
background, and this window hides all the penguins.

A first question is if this is indeed correct?

If so, could anyone describe it in more technically correct terms.  I
would like to write a warning about the issue in the description of
the package.

To handle the issue, I've considered to blacklist environments that do
something like the above in the desktop file with a line
"NotShowIn=GNOME;..." for Gnome and other environments doing something
like this.  (I fear that it would mean most modern environments.)
Even better would be if there were some way to dynamically check if
the "real root window" was available.  But I'm not aware of any way to
test that, nor any way to let the desktop file use that information if
I had it.

But a problem is that "NotShowIn=GNOME;" doesn't seem to have any
effect in the current Gnome version.  There is no menu to exclude
xpenguins from, and when I try it seems just as available regardless
of that setting.  As you may have guessed I'm not a regular Gnome
user, but that is what I see when I test it.

So a second question is if anyone has any advice on how to best handle
this?  How to best make sure Gnome users don't get fooled to use a
program that do not work in their environment.

Any advice on the subject would be appreciated!

[Matthias Clasen]

On Tue, 2016-05-31 at 18:54 +0200, Göran Uddeborg wrote:
>  Hello!
>  
>  I would like to ask for some help what to do with
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1324881  I've been
>  pondering it for some time, but I know too little to know what to do.
>  
>  It's about the old amusement xpenguins.  (A program showing small
>  penguins walking on the windows and jumping between them.)  As can be
>  seen in the bug report, it doesn't show anything in e.g. Gnome.  From
>  what I understand this is because Gnome doesn't show the actual X
>  root
>  window.  It has a second window covering the entire screen as
>  background, and this window hides all the penguins.
>  
>  A first question is if this is indeed correct?
>  
>  If so, could anyone describe it in more technically correct terms.  I
>  would like to write a warning about the issue in the description of
>  the package. 
I would suggest something like:

xpenguins works by drawing on the X root window. This is a cute hack
that might not have the desired effect in modern desktop environments
where the root window is not visible.

>  
>  But a problem is that "NotShowIn=GNOME;" doesn't seem to have any
>  effect in the current Gnome version.  There is no menu to exclude
>  xpenguins from, and when I try it seems just as available regardless
>  of that setting.  As you may have guessed I'm not a regular Gnome
>  user, but that is what I see when I test it.
>  
>  So a second question is if anyone has any advice on how to best
>  handle
>  this?  How to best make sure Gnome users don't get fooled to use a
>  program that do not work in their environment. 
How did you determine that NotShowIn=GNOME; doesn't have any effect?
It should work fine to hide xpenguins from the places where
applications are normally listed in GNOME (the shell overview and
search).

[Göran Uddeborg]

Matthias Clasen:
>  How did you determine that NotShowIn=GNOME; doesn't have any
> effect?
>  It should work fine to hide xpenguins from the places where
>  applications are normally listed in GNOME (the shell overview and
>  search). 
It should?  Then I'll try it again; I probably made some kind of
mistake when testing.

Thanks for your reply.  It sounds like creating the blacklist is the
best available option after all.