VDG suggestions and wishes about the system tray

[Eike Hein]

On 30.08.2014 14:31, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> I just looked up the draft specification (since there is no final one yet)
> from our side [1] and looky what I found:
>
> "Passive: The item doesn't convey important information to the user, it can be
> considered an "idle" status and is likely that visualizations will chose to
> hide it."
>
> Yes, that doesn't say that Plasma will definitely hide passive SNIs, but
> according to this specification, developers should actually _expect_
> visualizations to hide passive SNIs. So,  according to this specification,
> applications that rely on passive SNIs _not_ to be hidden are clearly doing it
> wrong, and we could hit them over the head with the spec if they complain.

I disagree with this premise. The spec is simply vague. "Hiding"
can mean "remove from field of view". Something hidden generally
still exists, and can be reached somehow. This is in fact the
meaning of "hidden" in our current UI (not just in the tray, btw.
- think of panel auto-hide). It's worth pointing out that the
designers of that UI contributed to the spec you're talking about.

It's also possible for the spec to be wrong. It's a draft.

And again, if apps like that are inherently "doing it wrong",
then it's not their fault because our libraries and our desktop
shell UI doesn't support writing and using applications in this
way very well.

If I see you "hit application devs over the head" based on such
poorly-argued arguments I won't be impressed, and nor, presuma-
bly, will they.


Cheers,
Eike