[Usability] Re: Proposal for notification area (Magnus Bergman)

[Magnus Bergman <magnusbe algonet se>]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 12:19:50 +0100
"Sergey V. Oudaltsov" <sergey oudaltsov clients ie> wrote:

> > Displaying status
> 
> > This is a *different problem* and needs a *different solution*.
> > It's up to the user to decide what she wants to monitor. If she
> > wants to monitor a variable such as the battery status or the new
> > mail count, she should  explicitly add such a monitor (as an applet
> > or as a gkrellm plug-in). This problem is already solved.
> 
> > The current solution doesn't work between different GUI:s. Well,
> > then *that* is the real problem. And the solution is to come up
> > with a standard for monitor applets between GUI:s. Then Gnome panel
> > can support this standard and integrate it with the native applets
> > in a nice way.
>
> OK. At least thank you for admitting there is a problem here:) So
> would it make sense to think first about cross-env monitor standard
> (probably, at this point the discussion should go to
> xdg freedesktop org or something) - and then tighten the ropes on
> Notification Area abusers? Otherwise you just leave NO choice to the
> application which want to show their statuses on different platforms -
> and dont want to be blaimed by as GNOME-"incoherent".

Yes, that was exactly my idea about how it should be done. There are
then two things to take care of:

1) Coming up with a standard for cross environment *persistent monitors*
   (temporary monitors won't be supported and I see no reasonable way to
   support them either). It would make very much sense to get in touch
   with freedesktop.org about this. But it doesn't feel like I'm the
   right person for doing this (but I will possibly try to do my best
   if no one else volunteers). It might be a good idea to get in touch  
   with some gkrellm people too? With their expertise this can be really
   great.

2) Coming up with a completely new standard for notification areas.
   Something that can (and should) be used by all environments. One can
   not be sure, but I really hope that all of them whats something that
   ends this nightmare, over something that mimics the behaviour of
   windows. (Doing it like Microsoft does is often considered better
   than doing it the best way currently known to man.)