Thoughts on the systray II.

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday 02 May 2005 05:14, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> > agreed. for now we can experiment with it using WM hints until we get the
> > interaction down, and then when we move to an IPC mechanism with a system
> > bus we can switch to that =)
>
>  Can we? If the tray is to work as an another taskbar, then it simply has
> to rely on a WM, WM hints, and X, end of story.

the input that you've been fairly resilient to so far is that while the tray 
is similar to the taskbar, it is NOT the taskbar. it has slightly different 
semantics. there is absolutely no reason by the tray must be tied to 
individual windows, unlike the taskbar which is a direct representation of 
visible windows. the tray is a respresentation of a service (e.g. 
notification)

>  The very basic principle of my patches is that any window can be docked
> into exactly one tray icon, which can have a popup and whatever. If you

which i see as a basic limitation imposed upon us due to not yet having an IPC 
mechanism that is appropriate for this. i don't see this as a long-term 
necessity.

> don't like that, propose something different.

for the time being, we chart a course using WM hints because that's the only 
thing we have at hand that actually works. apps that have windows can begin 
to use this new mechanism (not caring how it works under the covers) and 
when/if we get an IPC mechanism capable of doing what we need, i will port it 
to that. the apps using the new system shouldn't see any change, and more 
apps will then be able to use it and we can make it a bit more expressive too 
(e.g. supply hooks for the tray to ask for application status).

we have all the way until KDE4, after all.

so what i'm suggesting is we take the pragmatic approach of "this works today" 
which will give us something to at least start with and if IPC never arrives 
in the fashion necessary, we will have something for KDE4 that doesn't suck. 
but i'm also leaving the door open for improvements between here and the 
release of KDE4.

> If I get to final polishing 
> of all the functionality and only then you say that you ... uhm ...
> actually don't want that in Kicker, I'll consider flying to Malaga with a
> baseball bat with your name on it ;).

i don't play much baseball, but i'll be sure to use it whenever i do. ;-P

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
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