application indicators

[Colin Walters <walters verbum org>]

Hi,

On the subject of the Ubuntu application indicators work:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopExperienceTeam/ApplicationIndicators

First, +5000 that this change is being driven by designers, and +1000
that new useful code is being written.  There are definite problems
being solved here.

Now, both of those said, I have two issues I'd like to bring up.

* In the big picture, is this something we're recommending all
applications to use?  Some?  Only ones which send notifications?
* It'd be really nice to get some discussion of how this fits in with
the design plans for GNOME Shell (note that in GNOME 2 if applications
use this, you have potentially *3* representations of an application
in the top panel, this is something we can obviously improve in GNOME
3).
* On a technical level, this really makes more sense in GTK+.  There
are a lot of advantages to this; we've been working hard to push all
useful application functionality lower in the stack rather than being
a collection of random libraries, and this is a reversal there.  If it
were in GTK+, then we have to consider x-platform issues like does
this map at all to Windows 7 jump lists, etc., but it seems way easier
to me to just patch GTK+ (even if it's #ifdef X11) than to patch apps
for all the configure goo, write custom bindings etc.