thoughts on the systray

[Waldo Bastian]

On Sunday 13 February 2005 23:58, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > of your writeup. I dont't know if I fully understand the scope
> > of what you consider appropriate uses of the systray, but it's
> > clearly not about arbitrary unconstrained user interface.
> > If you allowed in-process embedding of arbitrary widgets, you'd
> > have most of the same problems that you discussed.
>
> i fear you didn't understand what i wrote then. =)
>
> the idea i'd like to see for the system is thus:
>
> 	o a DBUS bus that applications can publish "i have a system tray entry,
> here are the details of it". the application would update this information
> as state changed. think about autohiding icons, for instance, and the need
> to know the current state of an application (idle, important stuff
> happening, etc).
>
> 	o host apps (e.g. the systray applet in kicker) would consume this data to
> present an interface. the interface would be 100% under the control of the
> host app, including what to do when the user, for instance, right clicks on
> an entry versus left clicks on an entry.
>
> the application with a systray entry would only publish data, (and receive
> event notifications, for instance "the user wants to see a context menu for
> this entry") and not have anything to do with the actual presentation or
> management of the GUI. this immediately puts some limits on the system
> tray, allows the host app to sanely and powerfully manage the information
> in its display and separates the publish/display actions.

Yes, I think this is a good approach. 

You mentioned Windows tray icon compatibility, what kind of requirements does 
that have?

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian at kde.org   |   Free Novell Linux Desktop 9 Evaluation Download
bastian at suse.com  |   http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/eval.html
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