Re: Revisiting the GNOME Panel in general...

[Gediminas Paulauskas <menesis chatsubo lt>]

On Tr, 2004-09-29 13:58+0800, Davyd Madeley wrote:
> We have a couple of fields in the existing spec, I'm not sure if there
> is an existing HINT field however, from memory there is not.
> 
> >   * size negotiation -- applets can query the panel to find out it's
> >     size and orientation, notification icons can't.  Possibly useful for
> >     things like the contact lookup applet
> 
> Hmm, true. I hadn't thought about this to be honest. I forget that
> people occasionally use non-horizontal panels.

Some like a panel bigger than 24px, but notification area does not scale at
all. We shouldn't force users to use a fixed size panel, and
applets should intelligently use available area.

> >   * moving/re-ordering icons -- we'd need some way to be able to move
> >     and re-order icons; this would need co-operation with the applet to
> >     let the panel do that to it.
> 
> I don't see how, but it's possible.

The same way as current panel does?
 
> >   * menus -- how do we add things like the Move, Lock & Remove menu
> >     items?  How do those messages go to the panel
> 
> I had originally thought that the panel could merge menu items like it
> does with current applets. However that isn't supported by the
> notification area spec, it's a feature of bonobo.

All notification icons derive from EggTrayIcon, right? Context menu merging
is used in GtkTextView, GtkEntry, GtkLabel etc. The same approach could be
used for notification icon context menu I think.

> > What would the applets-session-manager do?  How would that be different
> > from the ordinary session-manager?
> 
> It would not have the problems currently experienced by the session
> manager. The hard solution would be to fix the current session manager,
> the easy solution is to write a session manager for applets, spawned by
> the real session manager.

Or use D-BUS service manager (if there is such thing).

> > I figure there would be a hardware applet manager that'd add detect
> > hardware and add the appropriate applets on startup, and as they're
> > plugged in ... these wouldn't get saved in the session.
> 
> Agreed. Perhaps I explained it badly. The hardware manager would get
> launched by session. It would save information in gconf about what sort
> of hardware to show and hide (I might not care for having my eth0
> connection ever displayed). Nothing about it would be saved in a session
> based context.

Show/hide is generic feature needed for other notification icons, not only
hardware. You may want to hide Rhythmbox icon as well as you do eth0 icon, I
see no difference, except that Rhythmbox is launched by user, and Network
monitor launched by hardware manager. Oh well, it should not be launched at
all. Means hardware applet manager should consult generic Hide list before
launching things.


menesis