Re: [Ayatana] Message Indicator: Listing apps in menu even if they are not on

[Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste@xxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Ted Gould<ted@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-09-03 at 17:42 +0300, Juha Siltala wrote:
>> Is this true? Don't we set our preferred apps in gconf? Can it
>> not be asked for this information?
>
> There is currently a way to set the preferred applications for a few
> categories, which then saves the setting in GConf.  But that's a problem
> for a few reasons.
>
> By looking there we'd artificially limit the menu to be a few categories
> that we dictate.  We'd be choosing a "mail" app, an "IM" app, etc.  When
> in reality there are going to be new categories that we don't quite
> understand, especially when they start.  As an example, I have a patch
> to the lp-tools[1] that puts code reviews in the messaging menu.  If
> someone requests me to code review something on Launchpad it pops up
> there and I can click on it to do the review.  It'd pretty silly for us
> to have "preferred code review platform."
>
> By using GConf we're locking ourselves into only GNOME apps.  There are
> a ton of people that do things like run Ubuntu and use apps like KMail.
> They should get the same experience as those who like Evolution.
>
> The data in those settings is stale at best and doesn't reflect the
> applications that are actually installed.  GConf doesn't really have a
> good way for us to do something like Debian alternates for the default
> default.  We could definitely invent something, but it gets pretty crazy
> pretty quick.  Applications also don't look at it to provide a way to
> set them as the default.  It would be pretty obtuse to set the values
> for users as they're not prevalent.
>
> Sometimes users use more than one application of a particular category.
> A common use case is that people will use XChat for IRC and Pidgin for
> other IM networks.  There are other cases like Evolution for corp.
> e-mail and GMail for home.  A single preferred app doesn't work.
>
> All in all, I think that the default installed applications work as a
> seed for the menu as good as having preferred applications.

Since I have confirmation (I think?) that the message indicator is no
longer and indicator and so much more, the point is moot.

I have no idea what the new goals of this message [something] are and
the documentation is not updated to reflect the new goals, I can't
really comment on any other use cases or functionality because I don't
really know what the purpose of the message [something] is. It doesn't
look like anyone else does either, they just know it will do more
stuff than it does now.


-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project
KDE e.V. Board of Directors
www.kde.org