This is closely related to bug 45711, but not identical.

Bug 45711 asks for the ability to open multiple files at once in a single
application instance. E.g., select 10 GIMP files and launch them all with a
single copy of the GIMP application.

This bug is about the ability to open a file in an existing running instance of
the application. In other words, you double-click one GIMP file, it launches the
GIMP with that file. Then you double-click another GIMP file, it should open the
new file in the existing instance of the GIMP, not launch another application
instance.

Unfortunately, there is to my knowledge no standard way to do this for unix
applications, and it may not supported by very many applications. Nautilus
itself knows how to handle this, as does xemacs, code crusader, the GIMP, and no
doubt some others.

Different applications handle this differently, so the MIME application registry
would have to be involved.

Pavel says "most of the apps use a socket, launch a temporary instance of the
app, have it find the socket and send the master app the new parameters through
the socket".

This is definitely not for 1.0. It would be nice to get this to work well
someday, but may be difficult.



------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org 2001-09-09 20:57 -------