Launcher problems... bugs or am I just too stupid to get it?

[John D Lamb]

On 13/05/12 00:39, Paul Smith wrote:
> I can't figure out this new-fangled Launcher!  It's behavior just
> doesn't make sense to me.  I just want an icon on the Launcher such that
> when I click it, my application launches, I don't get extra icons in the
> Launcher for it, and when I click the icon again it takes me back there
> (the same behavior as the other icons in the launcher).  Is that not
> possible?
> 
> Any help?

This looks like a Java-specific problem. Jabref, already in the
repositories, has similar problems. You can lock it to the launcher. But
it won’t restart from a launcher button in 11.10 or 12.04.

I have my own application that I’ve installed manually in the launcher
that can start a Java application. When the Java application starts a
new item, with the Java logo instead of the original one, appears in the
launcher and the application starts without any problems. I can lock
this item to the launcher. But I can’t then use the new item to restart
the original application.

I suspect the problem arises when one process uses an exec call to
replace itself with another, which is the natural choice for a shell
script starting a Java application. I don’t know the solution. But a
starting point might be to look for Java applications that work well
with launcher.

-- 
John D Lamb