dbusmenu-list team mailing list archive

[Marco Martin <notmart@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 18 May 2010, Aurélien Gâteau wrote:
> On 18/05/2010 16:04, Marco Martin wrote:
> > On Tuesday 18 May 2010, Aurélien Gâteau wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> (This is not exactly for DBusMenu, but this list seems to be a common
> >> ground for all involved people, so I choose to post it there)
> >> 
> >> Right now a StatusNotifierItem can only display an icon. Last week at
> >> the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) we discussed the idea of adding a
> >> Label property to the org.kde.StatusNotifierItem interface. This would
> >> provide a nice way for applications to display short text in addition to
> >> the icon, without resorting to the use of custom pixmaps made of text
> >> rendered over existing icons.
> >> 
> >> Here are some use cases for such a property:
> >> - A keyboard layout switcher could show the name of the current layout.
> >> - A battery indicator could show the remaining percentage.
> >> - A mail client or an RSS agregator could show the unread message count.
> >> 
> >> What do you think of this?
> >> 
> >> Aurélien
> > 
> > i did think about it back then, but
> > I'm not sure about that, because it would require said text to be very
> > short, 2-3 letters max
> > this way it would put a bond on what the visualization is
> > also it can really open a can of worms mixing text and  icons in general,
> > because in this way you have to do an assumption on what color the icon
> > is, what size it is, and where the text will be put over the icon
> 
> The thing is: it does not have to be painted over the icon. It's up to
> the visualisation to decide this. There is no reason why the text
> shouldn't be displayed on the right of the item for example (or is there
> a reason and I just missed it?).
> 
> On the other hand if the visualisation wants to paint the label over the
> icon, it can do things like painting a border around the text to ensure
> it remains readable. Again, this will ensure a more consistent look than
> having each application paint the text itself.
> 
> Aurélien
this is true, hmm
how you would do it in our visualization?
maybe an opaque rectangle over the icon of plasma background color and text 
over it of plasma text color?
fact is, i would keep our systray with as square icons as possible, without 
long side labels, so with just maybe 4 character max and the rest of the text 
in the tooltip if it doesn't fit?

Cheers,
Marco Martin