Re: panel notification area -- not many apps

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Mon, 2003-03-03 at 19:15, Alan wrote:

> Good points.  I've always kinda wondered about why ACME was there all
> the time when all it allowed me to do was go into a config screen, which
> I could get to by going to the config menu IIRC.  

Acme definiely doesn' belong there, any more than Metacity or ORBit do. 
;-)

> In a way there's not a real difference between an applet and a panel
> notification icon.  I mean in the end, they are *all* icons that appear
> on the panel.  Personally I think that it's a bit silly.  Now, I'm not
> hugely informed on the nuts and bolts of the two, I assume that there
> are fundamental differences in how they are created.  IE: an applet is
> it's own program, and a notification icon is created by an application.
> However, at the end of the day, gweather, acme, gaim, etc are still
> icons sitting along the top/bottom of the screen. 

Well, after a long and informative debate with jdub about it, apparantly
the separation is that the notification area is for, well,
notification.  Things that aren't notifying the user of anything don't
belong there.  For example, teh GAIM icon should only be fore notifying
you of a buddy logging on or somethign (which it doesn't, last I
checked, and would be nice...).

I'm still not sure tho on whether icon are supposed to *stay* there even
when not notifying you of anything - after all, they are just interface
bloat when they are, from the notification standpoint.  I still
personally rather like being able to "control" apps from them tho (like
send a new IM from GAIM, or skip a song in gnome-cd).

> 
> alan