[Bug 35316] "these windows do not support save current setup" message questionable

[Martin Pool]

Public bug reported:
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/35316

Affects: gnome-session (Ubuntu)
       Severity: Normal
       Priority: (none set)
         Status: Unconfirmed

Description:
To reproduce:

1. Log in to a gnome session.
2. Run e.g. rxvt
3. Choose System/Log out
4. Observe that gnome shows a window saying 'Warning: These windows do not support "save current setup" and will have to be restarted manually next time you log in'

The message is factually correct and will (I presume) happen if you run
any X applications old or primitive enough not to understand session
manager messages.

The value of displaying this message to typical users to me seems very
questionable:

- Most users will not be able to take any meaningful action on the
dialog other than click OK.  They're generally not in a position to fix
the application.  Telling them about it every single time they logout
just just seems like an attempt to bully them into not using those apps.

- Lack of automatic restart is the expected behaviour for old non-gnome
applications.

- If closing other applications takes some time the user may have
stopped paying attention to the display by the time the window comes up.
e.g. they may have closed a laptop's lid.  This dialog prevents the
machine from shutting down, which is highly unlikely to be desired by
the user.  If it is not removed entirely, it should at least have a 30
or 60 second timeout before closing automatically.

- The message refers to X11 implementation details that will not be
meaningful to most users.

- If the user realizes that they actually don't want to quit let they
can't cancel the logout at this point, so the dialog is really just
mocking them.  In fact it's non modal so they can click in other windows
to close them, but this is not obvious.

There is an argument that some users may have unsaved data in old
applications and may forget to save it before quitting their session.
Many users will not be in that category - if they use such applications
they will be accustomed to automatically saving before quitting.  In any
case there is already a logout confirmation dialog.  if the goal of the
dialog is to protect against this case then the emphasis of the message
should be on unsaved data, not on the fact that they won't be restarted.

I'd like instead a dialog something like this:

   Some running applications do not support GNOME session management and
cannot be automatically saved.  Do you want to logout anyhow?

  [ ] Don't show this mesage again.

  [Cancel] [Logout]

The text is still a bit jargonish.  Ideally "logout" would be replaced
with "reboot", "shutdown" as appropriate.