Re: Bring some KDE / Ubuntu to the System Status Area?

[Giovanni Campagna <scampa giovanni gmail com>]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Dan Winship <danw gnome org> wrote:
> On 06/24/2010 11:04 AM, Giovanni Campagna wrote:
>> Again, I could not find decent documentation, but isn't the protocol
>> able to transfer any GtkMenuItem?
>
> No, it scans the menu and constructs an XML serialization of it, sends
> that over D-Bus, and then the other end converts the XML back into a
> GtkMenu. The serialization format only supports specific things.
>
>> Or reversing the question, if the protocol is not enough, how come
>> that Ubuntu is shipping gnome-bluetooth and gnome-power-manager using
>> dbusmenu for transport, and they look pretty like Gtk-based ones?
>
> There's nothing unusual in the bluetooth or power-manager applet menus
> though. The protocol was *designed* to handle simple menus like those.
> It's stuff like NM-applet and the volume control that make things
> complicated.

That's not true. Bluetooth has subtitles, which were indicated as one
of the problematic items, and gnome-volume-control-applet has been
completely replaced with ayatana's indicator-sound (I also mentioned
it as an example).
In general, we need a protocol that can handle: (invalid / inactive,
subtitle, normal) x (checkbox / toggle, radio, normal) x (image,
normal). Are you sure the protocol does not handle all these cases and
it cannot be extended to include them?

> -- Dan
>

Giovanni