unity-design team mailing list archive

[Sense Hofstede <qense@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 17 May 2010 20:28, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 17/05/10 15:30, Sense Hofstede wrote:
>> * most applications will already be there AND it is natural for the
>> launcher to be filled with icons => it doesn't feel untidy when it's
>> full and the presence of an application in the launcher doesn't
>
> We'll still have this issue in Unity, if apps that don't have a window
> open, but are still running and *could* have a window open, show up in
> the Launcher as well as in the category indicator.
>
> Mark
>
>
The thing with this is that we should decide whether or not to show
running daemons to the user. Currently there is the app-is-running
triangle for Gwibber in the messaging menu when the gwibber-service
daemon is running, even when the Gwibber client is not.

This is probably the way it should be because there is something of
Gwibber running, and just as you want to know when Empathy is running
-- which means you're online -- even when the Empathy window is not
visible, you probably also want to know whether the Gwibber daemon is
running and looking for tweets and dents.

> To access the messaging app, you go to the messaging menu, regardless of
> whether or not it's running.
It'd be somewhat similar for the most often used applications in the
Unity launcher, so the dock adds consistency here it seems.

Taking the quote above in account we should wonder: do we want to make
the launcher behave similarly to the category indicators? I think we
should consider it for the sake of consistency. But, lets imagine
Gwibber sitting in the launcher; its daemon is running, but its client
window is closed. Now, when you would press its icon in the launcher
you would expect its window to pop up like any other application
you've minimised. So some speed optimisations for the launch of
applications we ship by default might be needed to fulfil the users'
expectations.

However, like discussed previously in this thread; what about things
like Alt+Tab or, for that matter, the Compiz Scale-like overview mode
you currently get in Unity when pressing the Ubuntu logo? Should we
launch the Gwibber window? How would we know what process to launch by
looking at the service process?

Or should we hide applications that show up in category indicators
from the dock, or should we have inconsistency between the running
indicators (the triangles) of the category indicators? Or maybe we
should integrate the category indicators in the launcher and make them
appear (Slightly? How slightly?) different?

Another issue: how would the launcher know what daemon belongs to what
client *.desktop file? Maybe some integration with the category
indicators is needed here. (Yay for DBus and standards!)

A lot of questions, but no answers from me (yet?), because now I have
to do the dishes.

Regards,
-- 
Sense Hofstede
[ˈsɛn.sə ˈɦɔf.steː.də]