2010/6/16 Conscious User
<conscioususer@xxxxxxx>
"Breaking" is too strong of a word. Putting Wine/Java icons in a
separate window or indicator menu would make them suboptimal,
sure, but still fully functional.
It's the exact right word, since I wasn't talking about functionality. Rocks are functional, but have a broken experience when it comes to building houses, especially if you are used to a hammer. It may not be breaking functionality (actually for icons that indicate status, it does that too since it will be hidden) but it DOES break experience. Regressing to a window in particular would be a horrible experience and totally unacceptable. Cramming it into some kind of drop-down indicator not much better, since a lot of apps communicate via these old indicators.
You do realize that moving these indicators to windows or menu in no way unbreaks them, or makes them conform - they will stick out just as sorely, or worse. Sticking them in a menu does not make them behave like the rest of the desktop, so that effort is not accomplishing anything anyway. Just because all top levels are then menus does not mean that the perceived experience is any more coherent - Id argue that it's less coherent because it's unexpected and still does not conform. I understand the initial reaction to try and fit everything into the new menus, but in cases like this, the result just ends up (potentially much) worse and still fool noone that it's one system.
If we choose to use Wine or Java, we expect to step outside the blessed sandbox - now let us do that, please.
So the question is: can Wine/Java apps be considered cornercase-y
enough for this sub-optimality to be accepted?
No. Anecdotal, of course, but I know of exactly zero people on Ubuntu that does not run at least Wine to get at least Spotify which relies somewhat heavily on having a systray icon. At work, I also have a Java systray icon from DavMail without which I could not practically use Ubuntu at work (not impossible, just much harder, esp the calendar and Evolution is a crashing joke). Though the DavMail icon would suffer less from being in a menu, it does communicate that it's working etc by changing appearance so it's not nice to hide it in menu or window, even though it's rarely important.
The solutions here are, for Spotify: get a Linux client or provide an alternative - native app, plugin to Rhythmbox etc - there's a non-free library and several open efforts. And for DavMail: if it's possible for Java to use the menus in a nice way, bugfiling or even patches.
That's two examples that concern me. There's more. Steam, for instance, is a huge thing when it comes to gaming in Wine, since a lot of games do work well. They are rumored to release a Linux client though, and at that point they could probably be petitioned to behave nicely.
Just don't break my desktop experience with what I feel is essentially misdirected efforts, doing nothing to make the desktop more usable while also not making it seem more coherent in any way.
Thanks.
/ K