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

[William Jon McCann <william jon mccann gmail com>]

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 :)

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

> 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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

Thanks,
Jon