thoughts on the systray

[Lubos Lunak]

On Monday 14 of February 2005 23:22, Olivier Goffart wrote:
> Le Lundi 14 Février 2005 22:45, Lubos Lunak a écrit :
> > On Monday 14 of February 2005 21:59, Olivier Goffart wrote:
> > > There is also a need of a custom tooltip: I use often the tooltip of
> > > Noatun to know what's the title of the music I'm listening to, or the
> > > Kopete tooltip to know what account are offline.
> >
> >  I guess simply the caption could be used that way. The taskbar already
> > has a support for showing tooltips for such things. Alternatively,
> > there's also the possibility to specify explicitly text different from
> > the caption for the taskbar entry, although KDE doesn't really use it
> > because when I was playing with it it was causing weird effects. It could
> > get sorted out or something like that could get added if needed though.
>
> Yes, we could use that.
> Anyway, that will make impossible to have richtext on tooltip.

 Not impossible, perhaps only a bit more difficult. And Aaron's proposal has 
the same problem. That said, what Kopete has in its tooltip is probably too 
much for a tooltip.

> look the toolitp of noatun and Kopete, it's not simply a text.
>
> > > The menu + the status icon + the tooltip make actual systray icon
> > > different from taskbar entry.
> > > More, systray icons are on every desktop while takbar entry are only on
> > > desktop the window is.
> >
> >  I know this. That's why I said this special part of the taskbar could be
> > actually a separate applet, i.e. there'd be the "normal" taskbar and then
> > there'd be the "systray" taskbar. There'd still be the other advantages
> > of doing it the taskbar way instead of the current systray way.
>
> Can you explain the difference with that applet and the current taskbar ?
> I agree that it is a great feature to allow every application to be placed
> in the "systray" .  but why can't we use the current systray for that ?

 Because the current systray has a couple of both technical and non-technical 
problems. My first mail in this thread lists a couple of them. Even if Kicker 
after all these changes looks the same, there still should be gains.

> > > > 2) applet-like cases
> > >
> > > Systray icons are nice, because they are all 22^2 pixels, they fit good
> > > into kicker.  they also have a common "look" (a simple icon)
> > >
> > > Currents applets are all different, and they take generally more space
> > > on the kicker.
> >
> >  There's no reason kicker applets couldn't do what systray icons can.
> > That's what I meant with KPixmapPanelApplet.
>
> Ok.
> But anyway, applet take currently the full height of my horizontal kicker.
> while systray icons are by columns of two

 Well, I've suggested dumping all the systray functionality, implementing it 
anew, converting some systray apps to applets, improving the notification 
system, and perhaps more. Improving Kicker's geometry handling of the applets 
doesn't seem very complicated task compared to all that. Gee, I'm talking 
KDE4 here. So what that some minor detail _now_ isn't exactly as it should 
be?

> > > > - One additional problem here is that the content of the applet
> > > > window is completely controlled by the applet. This is definitely
> > > > necessary for some applets, e.g. for the kmix applet (applet, not the
> > > > systray kmix). But for many the functionality along the lines of
> > > > 'show this pixmap' and 'show context menu', like in Aaron's proposal,
> > > > is enough. I think this could be simply handled by subclassing
> > > > KPixmapPanelApplet from KPanelApplet, which would solve Aaron's
> > > > objections to applets.
> > >
> > > Good idea, and group them nicely in the kicker.  Oh, but that's exactly
> > > what the systray do.

 ^ [1]

> >
> >  Hmm. Do you know the answer for the Klipper systray vs Klipper applet
> > question in my previous mail?
>
> What question ?

 The one you find in the 4th paragraph from the end in my original mail. Ok, I 
admit it was a bit long. But it can be found even when just grepping the mail 
for 'klipper'. Not that the question really matters.

> For me, the main difference is that Klipper Applet take the full height of
> kicker, while klipper in systray take only 50% of it.

 Not again.

>
> >  And BTW I don't see any special reason why applets would have to be
> > grouped in the kicker.
>
> To save space.

 Your mentioning of the grouping (marked as [1] above) makes me believe you 
simply mean having them somewhere together, and not the thing taskbar does. 
How exactly is that supposed to save space?

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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