Re: Gnome shell suggestions after a bit of usage

[Aurélien Naldi <aurelien naldi gmail com>]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Florian Max <florian muellner gmail com> wrote:
> The "specific API" used by GNOME Shell is called libnotify, which was
> already used in GNOME 2. Ubuntu uses it for its notify-osd, and apparently
> it is also supported in KDE[0]. The support for status icons is considered
> legacy, its use is highly discouraged (and so would be the use of the
> KDE/Canonical replacement if support is added) - the message tray is a place
> to notify users about a particular event, not a taskbar replacement for
> applications.

As far as I know, libnotify supports only notifications (and does it
well). They can vanish after a while or require acknowledgement, but
they can not be truly persistent. The notification area was used both
for such notifications and to provide a way to interact with
"background" applications.

I do like the notification part in gnome-shell (beside the integrated
chat stealing focus, but all it needs is tweaking), I was talking
about the "interact with background application" part: I thought
gnome-shell also had an API for this as the indicators proposed by
canonical have been rejected. From a user point of view, the system
area in gnome-shell is very similar. What I do not know is wether it
is it limited to the shell and extensions, or if any application can
add something as well.
If it can be extended, which protocol does it use?
If it can not be extended, does it mean that some other solution
exists (now or as plan) or that the shell will NOT allow this?

Maybe the notification tray is not the right place for this, but the
protocol used for the indicators is just a protocol, the shell can the
choose where these things are placed, hide some of them, show them in
the overview or whatever feels right to the designers. Maybe the
protocol should be extended to add hints allowing better placement

I do think that canonical did a nice work trying to build generic GUI
for common use case (instant messaging and music players) and allow
any application to make its own actions available in a flexible and
themable manner. It is true that many applications abuse this, and I
think unity should show many of them into jumplists in the dock, but
this is not an option for gnome-shell which does not have a taskbar at
all.

Note: I do not want to open a gnome-shell vs unity flamewar, I love
and hate them both, I would just like to see more cross-desktop work,
which gnome has always been very good at. Obviously, this requires
time and open discussions. Canonical has not been good enough on this
side, and the existing protocol may need a lot more work before it can
be seriously considered in gnome, but it does solve existing problem
for me.

Regards.

-- 
Aurélien Naldi