Problem setting icon for Gtk2::StatusIcon

[January Weiner <january weiner gmail com>]

Hello,

I am trying to add a small notification feature for a program that I
wrote. This program runs in background and at regular intervals does
something. I have added a Gtk2::StatusIcon to let the user know what
is going on. The idea is that the icon changes when the program starts
doing its job.

I use Gtk2::StatusIcon->new_from_stock( 'gtk-apply' ) to set the initial icon.
I use $icon->set_from_stock( 'gtk-refresh' ) to change the icon when
the program is working. After calling set_from_stock, I run the
following to make sure that the icon is properly displayed:

while( Gtk2->events_pending() ) { Gtk2->main_iterate() ; }

Problem:
  1) when the icon is changed, the icon first disappears completely
from the notification area, and then it appears again. Throughout this
process, the notification area "flickers" (adapts to the removed /
inserted icon).
  2) sometimes the second (gtk-refresh) icon is not displayed at all,
especially if the GUI is busy doing other things (ie. I am moving the
cursor, typing, ...)

What am I doing wrong?

Here is example code that demonstrates (on my system...) the problem:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict   ;
use warnings ;
use Gtk2 -init;

my $status_icon = Gtk2::StatusIcon->new_from_stock('gtk-apply') ;
my $timer = Glib::Timeout->add( 1000, \&update, $status_icon ) ;

Gtk2->main() ;

exit( 0 ) ;

sub update {
  my $icon = shift ;

  $icon->set_from_stock('gtk-refresh') ;
  while( Gtk2->events_pending() ) { Gtk2->main_iteration() ; }
  sleep 5 ;
  $icon->set_from_stock('gtk-apply') ;

  return 1 ;
}


Thanks in advance,

January