Systemtray breakout notes

[Martin Graesslin]

On Friday 17 January 2014 16:22:34 Eike Hein wrote:
> On Friday 17 January 2014 10:23:48 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:01 PM, Sebastian Kügler <sebas at kde.org> wrote:
> > > 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.
> > 
> > Note that there exists DockManager API for exactly this purpose and
> > IconTasks is implementing it. Also Chrome/Chromium was integrating with it
> > (IconTasks using DockManager), I don't think it does anymore, though their
> > dockmanager handler checking is weird (basically they check for some
> > ubuntu/unity lib being loaded in memory), but it may have changed since I
> > last looked.
> 
> A couple of rough notes on the general idea:
> 
> * The status quo: The objects exposed on the KDE default Task Manager
>   traditionally are windows, not applications, and in this it differs
>   somewhat from the system tray ... the tray represents windows at
>   times, too, but in some sense is limited to docked main windows
>   while the Task Manager is not (document windows, utilitiy windows,
>   dialog windows ...). Assuming this difference persists, exposing
>   system tray data on the Task Manager unassisted would be met with a
>   couple of practical problems:
> 
>   - Apps may not use the same icon for their window and for their tray
>     icon, and window icons can further contain their own stateful in-
>     formation of their own (e.g. some drawing apps put a thumbnail of
>     the current document in there), so there can be contention between
>     the two.

We could solve this problem by having the statusnotifier to tell to which 
window it belongs. E.g. the KMail status notifier is linked to the main UI. 
That way they can be merged. If the connection is not provided it just ends up 
as a new item just like it is right now.

> 
>   - Some apps use the tray for 'docking' in addition to notifica-
>     tions, e.g. IM messenger buddy lists.

We defined IM as a "system service". So that going into the systray is fine.

Cheers
Martin
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