Re: Revisiting the GNOME Panel in general...



On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 11:38 +0800, Davyd Madeley wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 12:45 +0100, Scott James Remnant wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 00:01 +0800, Davyd Madeley wrote:
> 
> > > Scott, we indeed have identical views. For anyone who didn't understand
> > > my mumblings, try Scott's ;)
> > > 
> > Excellent!  From reading your original post I had the impression mine
> > were a bit more radical (especially combining launchers and nicons).
> 
> Call me fearfully conservative ;)
> 
When you're thinking radical, there's no point backing down on the scary
bits <g>

> >  * Applet API.  I'm with you that basically we're making everything a
> >    notification icon, in effect.  The Applet APIs would need to be
> >    overhauled to make the world a simpler place.  A lot of the harder
> >    work isn't needed with a more intelligent Panel.
> 
> I think we have pretty much everything we need already in the
> notification area spec. We could almost overhaul libpanel-applet to be
> EggTrayIcon I think. From my musing, all of the smarts would have to be
> in the panel.
> 
On a review of that, there's still some bits missing from
EggTrayIcon/notification icons we may want/need to do away with
"applets" entirely:

  * "type" hint -- in order to place new icons intelligently, we'd need
    some kind of associated purpose hint for them.  This could be
    "launcher", "hardware", "information", etc.

  * 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

  * 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.

  * menus -- how do we add things like the Move, Lock & Remove menu
    items?  How do those messages go to the panel


> >  * Launcher Plus.  This is a tricky bit; looking at a way to allow
> >    programs to "take over" their launcher for use as a control icon. 
> >    Making the launchers more "active" in general ... if I click the
> >    Mozilla icon when its already running, it should focus it (or maybe
> >    open a new window, for Mozilla?)
> 
> This is one I hadn't originally discussed, since I'm not entirely sure
> how to achieve it. I suspect it can be done in much the same way as
> everything else. 10 seconds of thought suggests something like:
> Launchers are put in place by the applets-session-manager with an
> appropriate name etc.
> 
What would the applets-session-manager do?  How would that be different
from the ordinary session-manager?

> If an application adds an applet of the same name, the panel puts this
> one in place instead of the static icon provided by applets session
> manager.
> 
The other way I was thinking was that each launcher is in effect a cheap
applet that keeps an eye out for this kind of thing, and also provides
click-to-focus and things like that.

This needs some thought, probably worth punting towards the freedesktop
guys as well at some point?

> >    There's almost certainly some session management gubbins here.
> > 
> >  * Hardware/Hal Applets.  Some kind of system to add and remove applets
> >    as hardware is added and removed.  Either, as you suggest, integrate
> >    this into gnome-session or some kind of applet manager daemon.
> 
> Yes. I would separate the hardware applet manager from the other applet
> manager (which would easily be part of -session or -panel).
> 
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.

Scott
-- 
Scott James Remnant
scott canonical com

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part



[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]