Re: notifications in gtk

[Kristian Rietveld <kris loopnest org>]

On Nov 6, 2012, at 4:23 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> Problems with GtkStatusIcon
> 
> - It is really centered around the idea that apps just export a small
> bit of their UI into the 'panel'
> 
> - It assumes that all desktops want to offer a permanent place
> ("system tray") for applications to present a clickable icon with a
> context menu
> 
> - It requires the application to be running as long as its icon is
> present, essentially forcing a daemon mode onto applications (eg
> evolution-alarm-notify)
> 
> - The X implementation uses XEmbed and can't really be made to work
> nicely in a composited environment
> 
> - The win32 implementation is also problematic

I would argue the OS X implementation is also problematic. Showing the icon in the OS X menu bar is quite easy, however, in response we currently typically pop up a GtkMenu. This gives interesting problems with grabs/event handling. Also, it looks quite out of place because native applications show a native menu. The current GtkStatusIcon makes it close to impossible to automatically convert a GtkMenu into a native menu (e.g. custom menu items) and there's also the case where the status icon pops up something that's not a menu.



regards,

-kris.