unity-design team mailing list archive

["Roderick B. Greening" <roderick.greening@xxxxxxxxx>]

It seems that this is not a message indicator or message queue as originally 
described, but rather a new kind of menu/launcher/accelerator. 

The question is, as posed by Celeste, whether the spec and the app line up, 
and it appears to not do so. 

For me, this should not be a launcher. There are plenty of those. But that's 
just my own opinion. 

So, how would you handle determining if the app should be listed in the menu 
or not? 

If it was just a matter of showing apps which are using the MI communication 
protocol (which means they are running) then it's trivial - you do nothing 
special but show the messages if/when they show up. No special cases need to 
be thought of and if a new app comes along, and they talk the proto, it should 
just work, and queue the message.

However, hardcoding a list of apps and treating this like a menu is just 
asking for future bug reports with users expecting to launch their app there, 
whether it supports the MI proto or not (of course this is just my opinion).

When something is no longer a duck, it ceases to quack :)

I expect, if everyone really wants it this way, then the scope of the MI needs 
to be changed and the spec updated to accurately reflect the new goals.

> On Wed, 2009-09-02 at 16:14 -0400, Celeste Lyn Paul wrote:
> > My question is: Why? To what purpose are all registered applications
> > always listed in the MI, regardless if they are running or not, if
> > they have messages or not, if the user even uses them or not.
> 
> The question comes down to whether users know if the applications are
> running or not.  If I'm used to going to the messaging menu to
> accomplish the task "Open the Pidgin Buddy List" should I have to know
> whether Pidgin is running or not?
> 
> So in the case where it's not running the computer launches the
> application and brings up the buddy list.  In the case where it was
> running, it brings the buddy list forward.  Either way the user
> accomplishes the task independent of what the computer is doing.
> 
> There is an issue with numbers of apps, which is rare, but unavoidable
> as it's nearly impossible to determine "the mail application I use"
> except by what's installed.  We're providing a blacklisting feature for
> people to remove applications from the list.
> 
> 		--Ted
>

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