"Hide in System Tray" and Plasma Active

[Fania Bremmer]

Am 10.04.2012 14:13, schrieb Marco Martin:
> On Tuesday 10 April 2012, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
>> 2. We only show specific icons, and we require applications to remove any
>> "Hide in Tray" options via HIG.
>> - Pro: Easier solution for us, since if someone disregards the guideline,
>> it's "their problem" and we don't have to care about it
>> - Cons:
>>    - If a systray icon really makes sense for a particular application, we
>> have to either make an exception or they just can't have it
>>    - Legacy applications may still be completely hidden
> applications should never really put anything in the systemtray (we were at
> some point thinking of breaking it by default even on the desktop), some still
> do but on active makes even less sense, there must be a really good reason why
> the panel state should be given to anybody
>
> i also note that in general bangarang still has a completely desktop ui that
> doesn't fit that much, it was known that it was going to need work.
>
> in general actual traditional systray icons (the old xembed ones) aren't
> supported at all and will never be technically possible to putthem there, the
> icons that use thestatusnotifier item protocol as the protocol states, the
> host may or may not decide to represent them, so shouldn't rely on an icon
> being actually visible.
> in the case of bangarang was explicitly hidden because only the items of
> category "hardware, system service" and "communications" are shown, and only
> when in active or notifying state. icons of applications category are always
> hidden now (they were hidden in response to another bug report iirc)
For me this is a question of the purpose of the systray and the purpose 
of the task switcher. Currently every running application is shown as a 
thumbnail in the taskswitcher, which is fine. The systray has always 
been discussed to keep it tidy and clean, without cluttering it up, 
which makes sense as well.

So for me the question is: in which cases would an (active) application 
need some sort of icon highlight to awaken interest to the user? Would 
it be in the thumbnail in the task switcher? Would it be in some sort of 
global notification dialog?
So in case of bangarang: why would you need the icon in the systray? The 
user notices that the app is running via the thumbnail in the 
taskswitcher (aka peek area :-) .  He can open and close the app there. 
What else is nedded?

Fania