[Panel-devel] Allow TaskBar Context Menus

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 19 October 2007, Alex Merry wrote:
> On Friday 19 Oct 2007, Mike Evans wrote:
> > Up until now, the taskbar would eat all right clicks in non-item
> > areas, because the task group eats up all unused area. This patch
> > passes the mouse click up to the containment, allowing the proper
> > context menu to appear.
>
> I feel a better solution might be to fix the the layout code.  Taskbar
> should have a definite widthForHeight, and the layout should stick to
> that and put spacing in between applets (the way kicker does it - you
> basically specify the left position of each applet, and it takes up as
> much space as it needs, bounded by where the left side of the next
> applet is or the right side of the panel).

- in kicker, the taskbar took up all the space and passed clicks through if 
there were no buttons. so your statement that it worked somehow better in 
kicker isn't quite right.

- as i've said a few times now, trying to arrange things that self-manage 
their content such as taskbars and clocks and pagers by going the "give me a 
fixed width for this height" is a sure path to insanity. which is swahili for 
kicker.

of course, there would be spaces between applets if layouts had been done 
according to my original suggestions. instead here we are fighting with the 
exact problems i said would come.

look, what should be happening is that widgets say how big they are and set 
their own damn sizes. then the layouts simply respect that and arrange the 
resulting blocks as best they can. layouts should be giving hints to the 
applets so they can appropriately size themselves; the real trick is to get 
to "i want all the space i can get!" applets to cooperate. in that case what 
i really think ought to happen is that applets should default to a minimal 
size, the layout should then see how much space is left over and inform them 
one by one that there is a bit more space if they'd like it and thereby dole 
out the remaining space.

this was actually part of the reason for form factors, but they have been 
happily ignored because ... i'm not sure why. maybe the concept was too 
difficult to grok or maybe people are just obstinate.

my only concern for the "share the space" mechanism is performance. however, 
applets should be able to calculate a minimum and a preferred size pretty 
easily and the "bit more space" should be in decently large increments, 
perhaps as %s of the remaining space giving a nice logarithmic interval to 
the algorithm.

but i have essentially  given up arguing over it because evidently the 
attitude is "what the fuck does he know" so... go for it. have fun. see how 
far this gets us.

the "best" part is that if whatever is there doesn't work well, i'll get the 
blame because it'll be in plasma and guess who gets to read every single 
bitch fest, usually personally addressed to them?

(the irony is that the other week i got accused on irc of micromanaging 
things. hah.)

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

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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