Allowing an activity to be launched multiple times in parallel

[Deepak Saxena]

On Oct 29 2008, at 19:40, Benjamin M. Schwartz was caught saying:
> Asheesh Laroia wrote:
> > I have a general sugar UI question: My activity, "License", a simple comic 
> > book reader <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/License> that has a license chooser 
> > aspect to it, can be launched multiple times if clicked multiple times 
> > from the activity launcher.
> > 
> > To me, that seems silly.  Is it normal for Sugar activities to be able to 
> > be launched multiple times like this?
> 
> I don't understand. Why are you surprised?  This is how every multitasking
> OS works*.

What the underlying OS does and what the application framework chooses to
do are separate things. My Palm phone and the Google Android phones  are 
both running Linux at its core but I can only run one instance of and 
application in each of those. I think our usage model should more closely 
resemble that of cellphone/MID device than the desktop model.

> Under Gnome, if I launch Totem twice, I get two Totem windows.  Under
> Windows, if I launch IE twice, I get two IE windows.  Under Sugar, if I
> launch Write twice, I get two Write windows.

On my KDE3 desktop, If I launch Kontact and then launch Kontact again, 
I don't get another window b/c it makes no sense for that application. 

On the XO, if we try to edit two documents concurrently on Write, we should
in my opinion only have on instance of write running which can switch quickly 
between document objects so the user percieves it as two separate instances.

~Deepak

-- 
Deepak Saxena - Kernel Developer - dsaxena at laptop.org