unity-design team mailing list archive

[Luke Morton <luke.morton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2010-05-15 at 14:45 -0600, Jeremy Nickurak wrote:
> What about just having a protocol for saying "here's something the
> application would like to implement", ala the existing indicator
> applet. Different implementations could do different things with it. A
> compliant window-manager might stick them in the title-bar in a
> consistent way. If the window-manager doesn't support it, a different
> implementation could put them in the existing indicator applet, or the
> notification area. It could be a seperate window, or a panel applet,
> or a dialog-box.... whatever the implementer likes.
> 
> 
> Handing over control of window decorations to the client applications
> is asking for a lot of trouble in terms of desktop look-and-feel
> consistency, as well as bugs. Given that there also seems to be better
> ways of getting the same features we'd like, application-dictated
> window decorations seems like the wrong path to me.

I've not been keeping a close eye on this discussion (so it may have
already been mentioned) but Mark Shuttleworth mentioned that CSD aren't
a requirement for windicators:

[16:28] <sabdfl> in my blog, i said that the work was enabled by CSD,
which is incorrect
[16:28] <sabdfl> it was inspired by CSD - it was thinking about CSD that inspired the idea to give that space back to the applications
[16:28] <sabdfl> the actual implementation can be done via CSD or via the window manager
[16:29] <sabdfl> and in fact, we *need* to express the windicators on the d-bus, to support the global menu case
[16:29] <sabdfl> which is what the window managers could tap into

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/openweekLucid/AskMark

So, the WM can still do the job it does best, but developers can ask it to do more via D-Bus.