Re: Will traditional notification area be available in gnome-shell 3.0?

[Sandy Armstrong <sanfordarmstrong gmail com>]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:50 AM, William Jon McCann
<william jon mccann gmail com> wrote:
> Hey Sandy,
>
> (I'm out of town and short on time today but wanted to reply quickly)
>
> On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Sandy Armstrong
> <sanfordarmstrong gmail com> wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I have a few questions regarding Tomboy in gnome-shell 3.0:
>>
>> 1) Will there still be a regular old notification area available, so
>> that Tomboy can run in the tray as it always has? (obviously running
>> in the tray is evil, blah blah blah, let's not get into that right
>> now)
>
> Not really...  We should be porting applications away from it as soon
> as possible.  I was going to make a separate announcement about it
> once I got a few more things done but since you brought it up :)

Okay, that's really fine, thanks for clearing it up.

> As you know, in GNOME 2, we had a mix of system components and
> application notification in the notification area.  In GNOME 3, we're
> providing a separate and exclusive place for the system status items.
> And we've designed a new way to provide notifications to the user that
> aims to puts the user in charge of the balance between disruption and
> information - the Message Tray
> [http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Guidelines/MessageTray].
>
> Core system components that use the notification area should be ported
> to be shell provided system status items.   Applications that use
> notification area status icons should be now be ported to use the
> Message Tray.  I've started to put together a porting guide, and it
> isn't complete:
>
> http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Guidelines/MessageTray/Compatibility

Cool, I'll check this stuff out.

>> 2) Are there any new or upcoming features in gnome-shell 3.0 that
>> would allow Tomboy to reimplement its note menu directly in the shell
>> (something like right-clicking the app icon), so that the notification
>> area icon would no longer be necessary?
>
> We have some plans for adding jumplist-like functionality, at some
> point, so that applications can supplement the drop down menu
> available on App Icon launchers.  Actually weren't you looking into
> adding that?  But basically, if no one wants it enough to write it I
> doubt it will get done.

Yeah, I proposed something, didn't see much feedback, got distracted.
Looks like this cycle might be a good time to pick it back up.

I don't expect you guys to do all the work here; I am just not
up-to-date on shell news and wanted to make sure I knew what the
current status of this sort of thing was.

> But we really want to not use the status icon in any case.

Yeah, it is gross.

> You didn't ask but we probably want to have a way to search through
> notes directly from the search box of the shell.  But again someone
> needs to write it.

Sure sure.

>> 3) Will gnome-shell 3.0 support extensions that modify the shell UI in
>> arbitrary ways?
>
> Not in a way that an application should expect to be able to use.
> Extensions are not APIs.

Right, and that makes sense.  I was just curious. :-)

> Basically, Tomboy or any notes app is an app and should behave
> consistent with other applications.  Hope that helps a little.  Let me
> know where you think we need more clarification.

I think that's very clear, thanks.  I don't think Tomboy is "special"
or should be treated as such.  I do, however, think that the note menu
provided by the tray/applet is something I don't want to lose.  In
fact, I think it's useful outside of the context of Tomboy, too, hence
my interest in more general jumplist support.

So it sounds like the answer is that if I want something like the
Tomboy note menu, that is a menu that is available without explicitly
switching to Tomboy, with pinning capability, I need to get kicking on
some patches and specs for jumplists in gnome-shell.

Thanks,
Sandy