[KDE Usability] Close button: reaaly close or go to system tray?

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On January 26, 2010, Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> And what happens to poor souls like me who don't have a single plasmoid
> anywhere (except for the digital clock in the panel)?

you don't have an application launcher (kickoff, classic menu, lancelot, 
etc.)? you don't have a task bar? a system tray? a pager? a device notifier? a 
nothing at all in your panel except a lone clock? ;)

(ok, that's tongue-in-cheek: all of those items are plasmoids. there are no 
non-plasmoids in a plasma-desktop.)

> I simply don't have
> any empty space on my desktop to put a plasmoid there and having to hide a
> window just to reach a plasmoid is not an option IMHO.

ignoring ctrl-f12 (dashboard), this is really a moot point.

we have the new-fangled KStatusNotifierItem (KSNI). it has the benefits of the 
old system tray icons (in that it presents the same information, plus a bunch 
more) without the drawbacks. in this case, the primary drawback of the old 
system tray icons are that they could only appear in one place and weren't 
really able to be integrated with things like the task bar.

if anyone wants to experiment with a "special service plasmoid area" such as 
Jos suggested, simply add a second system tray plasmoid to your panel and then 
configure it to -only- show Application icons and configure the "main" system 
tray plasmoid to -not- show Application icons.

if you really want to do something spiffy, work up a patch to the task bar 
that allows merging an Application icon with its taskbar entry, such that when 
the window is closed it retains an entry in the task bar that is actually the 
KSNI, but visualized (painted) like a taskbar entry.

this was one of the motivations for KSNI. it is a new tool we have at our 
disposal, figuring out how we wish to take advantage of it for these cases is 
the next step.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
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KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks