RFC: plasma-framework IndicatorArea formFactor()

[Marco Martin]

Hi all,
I was looking at some systray-related bugs, such as
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365569
and
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365967
and it occurs to me they always have in common the same reason: even
if I tried hard in the rewrite to make it less a "special case", it
still is just that: a "special case" (ever having allowed plasmoids in
the systray a long time ago in 2009 is still on of the design
decisions i mostly regret but that's another story)

what I'm thinking of, is having a new possible formFactor() value,
IndicatorArea (why exactly FormFactor?because it's exactly that, while
Horizontal means "can grow horizontally, constrained vertically, that
would mean constrained both horizontally and vertically)

So in that case applets would need to make sure to be square in that
particular formfactor, like the weather that wants to eventually
become non square in panels (and no, i don't want to allow non square
icons in the systray.. ever)

another difference would be (and that is kindof an hack, but at least
it puts that immutability hack there and only there) containments of
IndicatorArea formfactor would have a Mutable immutability°, because
the systray itself should always be able to both add and remove
plasmoids in itself even when immutable (even Systemimmutable) it
could still hide/disable the ui to do so when immutable, but must be
programmatically able to do so.

Unfortunately as it needs changes in plasma-framework it would need to
be a post 5.8 thing (how to properly fix 365618 in 5.8 I have no idea,
except perhaps the systray applet itself trying to temporarly unlock
plasma when it has to remove widgets, that would still be broken in
systemimmutable case, but better than nothing)

opinions? comments?

--
Marco Martin