Re: different icons if internet is available

["Patrick Bogen" <pdbogen gmail com>]

On 5/17/07, yelo_3 <yelo_3 yahoo it> wrote:
> sorry, but isn't the applet in the same project as NetworkManager??
> if not where should I send a patch to implement this?

Sorry, I misread. I thought you were asking for a seperate tray icon.
Nevertheless, I'm not sure if this is strictly in the scope of
NetworkManager (for one thing, how would you determine whether or not
you can "access the internet"?).

Now, as I see it, there are three ways to implement this that touch
NetworkManager or nm-applet:
(1) Implement it purely within nm-applet. This is, in my opinion,
wrong; nm-applet is purely a configuration and dbus interface to
NetworkManager. It shouldn't have any functionality on its own.
(2) Implement it within NetworkManager, and nm-applet gets the
information over dbus. This is better, but still: The focus of
NetworkManager is to configure your network, not necessarily to tell
you any information about your network. It doesn't map samba servers
or tell you if there's VPN available, why should it tell you if
there's a route to some arbitrary website?
(3) Write another dbus backend that does this task, and feeds
nm-applet the information. Well, maybe. But nm-applet is supposed to
only talk to NetworkManager (unless I've misunderstood its purpose),
and this would start to be a bit of feature creep.

So, the remaining option is a standalone tray icon (with whatever
architecture you want, dbus or otherwise). I honestly think this is
the best solution, as it tends towards keeping NetworkManager trimmed
down and focused, relatively speaking.

Now, as a disclaimer: I am not a dev. I have no sway over this
project, other than rhetorical. If you write a patch and submit it as
an RFE, it may well get accepted and integrated. Anything above is
*purely* my opinion, and does not necessarily reflect NetworkManager's
philosophy or policy.

I do sincerely believe, however, that writing a separate daemon would
be just as difficult or easy as modifying nm-applet and NetworkManager
to do this the correct way, and encourage you to choose this route, if
you choose to implement this yourself, rather than trying to tie your
work into NetworkManager.

--
- Patrick Bogen