Hi, I took time to talk to this subject because I wanted to write my proof of concept before replying. In my opinion, a systray is a bad idea. For the last two weeks I kept asking myself, "Why do people want a systray ? What exactly is a systray ? How can I provide it ?". For the first question I've directly asked to anybody I know was using trayer, or wanted a tray on E. The answers were about having a way to be notified, a quick way to show/hide some windows. A few were about using direct actions and each time with the same example, an audio player. And the last one that nobody say directly but somehow is always there, because they are simply used to it.
For the second question, the easiest way to find out what exactly is a systray, it's to look at the source. A systray on windows is the only way to move an app outside the taskbar, the only way to keep visible an application running in the background but needs a GUI sometimes and was the only way to provide a pseudo gadget. Nowadays a huge amout of applications running on windows put something in the tray. Most of the time the systray have more applications than the taskbar, and 3/4 of them being hidden to take less place within the bar (so much for the monitoring). So what exactly is a systray ? I dunno, if it's a way to continuously notify why hide the icons and show a bubble ? If it's a way to lighten the taskbar why only the application as the power to choose ? And if it's a way to provide quick actions why do we still need this under our WMs were any one of them can use modules for years ? Well, here is the problem. A systray is a mess in it's basic design. Some half done thing wishing to compete with OS X dock. So write a spec, even good, about something doing a bit of (continuous ?) notification, a bit of quick action and a bit of docking isn't, in my opinion, the greatest thing to do. Of course it will works, but why redo half of the job instead of finishing it once and for all ? First let's have a _real_ fdo specification about notifications, galago's one was refused. It still miss some details, but I think it's a good base. And I believe it's something far more useful than just a common way to blink an icon somewhere in the screen (the urgent flag can already be used to do it). By pushing it a little I did the notification boxes : http://lok.eadrax.org/images/notification_box-3.png http://lok.eadrax.org/images/notification_box-4.png Which means than a good notification spec could cover all the aspect of notifications, popups and icons. Moreover I didn't implemented it but this spec handle actions, their purpose is to reply to an event. A docking specification doesn't seems necessary, we already have everything we need to dock an application like it would be in a tray. IIirk is the proof and IBox is also a solution. And finally for quick actions there is no common way possible. Depending on the purpose of the applications you will not wish to display it the same way. For an audio player, having a module giving you the possibility to play/pause/next/prev with a single click is better than openning a menu and choosing the good action in it. See http://www.kuliniewicz.org/music-applet/ for example. Whereas to quickly change a network like with network-manager you would rather have a popup with a list showing directly the name of the network, if it's protected and how good you catch it. All that using the same look than your WM. Redoing a module for each WM takes more work but end up nicer than reducing everything to a menu. Mixing iiirk and notification together would provide over 90% of what a tray does. Add to that IBar/IBox and you get something near OS X dock. Of course any other combination is possible. All this relying only on the .desktop spec, a notification one and the old NetWM's skip flags, breaking nothing and just requiring sometimes to install a notification plugin. So no I don't think we should change the tray spec, we should forget about it. Even if we do change it, even if we also manage to make the applications following the new one. All we will get is a bunch of icons stacked at their own will in a corner with the ability to open a menu. I would rather like to see a clean and complete notification spec accepted by FDO. Samuel 'lok' Mendes ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
