Re: My gripes with Gnome Shell

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Tue, 2016-09-27 at 16:05 +0200, Jan Niklas Hasse wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2016, at 15:58, Sam Bull wrote:
> > On Tue, 2016-09-27 at 09:42 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2016-09-27 at 14:31 +0200, Jan Niklas Hasse wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 27 Sep 2016, at 13:44, 0x90 wrote:
> > > > > See this thread:
> > > > > https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/53d5kz/need_dev_info_
> > > > > abou
> > > > > t_
> > > > > legacy_traytopicons_plus_in/
> > > > > To achieve this goal, all apps need to be redesigned.
> > > > After reading the thread I still don't know what the
> > > > replacement
> > > > is.
> > > > Just remove the tray icon? And run in the background without
> > > > illustrating that to the user?
> > > I don't know - this seems reasonable to me.  If an application
> > > has a
> > > service component... just provide the service.  As a user why do
> > > I
> > > care? There is no need for me to see something unless something
> > > happens.
> >
> > Also, for email, the accounts can be setup in the control panel as
> > an
> > online account. If an account is setup through there, then it would
> > certainly be nice to have GOA or something trigger notifications 
> > for these accounts if an app is not open.
> >
> > This would be similar to what the Ubuntu phone does with UOA,
> > though
> > this is more born out of the lifecycle requirement, that apps
> > aren't
> > allowed to run in the background.
>
> While it makes sense for some applications, like email, it's rather
> confusing for something like an IRC client: I don't want it to run at
> start up, but I also want to be able to let it run in the background
> without a window. Without the tray I have NO idea if my IRC client is
> currently running (without using `ps aux` or something like that).

You can:
  (a) start it an minimize it - it appears in the tray.
   - or - 
  (b) have it start at startup.

I honestly cannot see a problem to be solved.

If it is running it appears in the tray underlined - that tells you it
is active.

> Also the tray icon also shows other stuff: For Dropbox / Seafile it
> shows when it's currently syncing data by spinning arrows.

A package could very well choose to contain a shell extension if it
needs some persistent custom presentation - a path exists to solve that
problem.  Many don't bother, likely, because it is a rather trivial
matter.  How often do you care if something is synchronizing?  It was
one of the failures of GNOME-2 is that the toolbar actively promoted a
kind of AD-HD;  when there was work to be done.

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <mailto:awilliam whitemice org> GPG D95ED383
Systems Administrator, Python Developer, LPI / NCLA