Systemtray breakout notes

[Mark Gaiser]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:01 PM, Sebastian Kügler <sebas at kde.org> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> During the sprint here in Barcelona, we've talked about the rework of the
> notification area / systemtray and had a critical look at its concept and
> direction. I've extracted some notes from it, which I plan to address in the
> coming weeks. Here's a quick run-down:
>
> Goal of the system tray: Showing messages, hardware status and system status
>
> This includes:
>         - Essential hardware interaction (e.g. network, battery, brightness)
>         - Essential system interaction (notifications, running jobs)
>         - Social / messages / email status
>
> (This means we explicitely don't see the system tray as a taskbar replacement)
>
> One question that came up: How can we remove stuff that doesn't belong here
> (according to above definition) elsewhere? Some ideas:
>
> - When no devices are plugged in, the device notifier should be completely
>   hidden
> - No bluetooth device -> no icon for bluetooth
> - The menu popup of statusnotifieritems should go into the systray popup
> - We should be able to dbus-activate plasmoids (so for example, when a
>   bluetooth device is plugged in, the systray can load a plasmoid)
> - The systray can override statusnotifiers with plasmoids, allowing an
>   improved functionality for some apps
> - the calendar should move into the systray popup

Why?
The calendar is part of the clock, that will remain the same i suppose?
Following that logic, it will never be in the systray at all.

>
> Calendar-related changes:
> - Calendar events should only be shown when Akonadi is running, otherwise, the
>   interface can be collapsed there.
> - the event view becomes "Day's details"
> - Adding an event should be possible directly from the calendar

+1 to all of that.

>
> The XEmbed systemtray mechanism will not be supported anymore, instead we will
> attempt to merge support for statusnotifieritems into Qt (for QSystemTray).
> Other desktops are going a similar route.

Please don't use excuses as "Other desktops are going a similar
route.". They might, but they suck at doing it in my opinion.
I'm guessing you aim at windows 8 and perhaps gnome here. Otherwise,
please do share more details.
>
> We would like to redesign Klipper's functionality to make it more integrated.
> This will likely result in a reimplementation of Klipper as Plasmoid.
>
> Some applications nest in the systemtray, and appear in both taskbar and
> systemtray. We'd like to merge their entries. Example: Kmail's taskbar item
> could show the number of unread emails as an overlay, instead of having a
> separate icon in the systray.
>
> Overall, the direction of systemtray was met positively.
>
> This is quite a lot of work, and perhaps not achievable in one go. We'll see
> about this in the coming weeks, I'll work on the items in a way that
> prioritizes for impact and stability.
>
> Feedback, as usual, welcome. :)

Most of it sounds good, but it's a bit difficult to picture it. Could
you make some before and after mockups in conditions where this would
be visible to the user?

> --
> sebas
>
> http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9
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