unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ted Gould <ted@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2010-05-17 at 16:47 -0600, Jeremy Nickurak wrote:
> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 16:08, Ted Gould <ted@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>         Anything that's not a system indicator :)  The library that
>         handles this fallback is libappindicator.  You can find any
>         application using libappindicator like this:
>         
>         
>           $ apt-cache rdepend libappindicator0 
>         Probably the simplest case in Lucid is to look at the
>         Rhythmbox application indicator or the GNOME Power Manager
>         one.
> So, what distinguishes a system indicator from an application
> indicator? From the users' perspective, we have an "Indicator Applet
> Session" (which in behaivor is actually a "Session Indicator Applet",
> that is to say, an applet that indicates what your session looks
> like), an "Indicator Applet", which shows both Application and System
> indicators? Is the messaging menu an Application indicator or a System
> indicator? Or a third category?

Well from an engineering perspective it's about the requirements on
reliability and how it gets tested.  All of the system indicators are
expected to be started when the system logs in so they are designed with
that in mind.  Also, they have a MVC style architecture which allows for
the service to die and be restarted without the user noticing (you'll
never squish every bug).  Also, Application Indicators use
libappindicator which should work well in the KDE Status Notifier area
as well.

From a design perspective I believe that system indicators are designed
to be the default set that describe what the system is doing.
Application Indicators are "extras" which applications feel that they
need.  Now this is a little muddled right now as we're in transition
with things like GNOME Power Manager being an application indicator
where clearly it is a system function.

That's one of the fun things about 6 month releases, you can only bite
off so much -- but also the reason that we have a bi-annual meta cycle
of LTSes.  We're getting there!

> Empathy seems to handle this via its own logic, reverting to its
> legacy notification-area icon. Likewise, where does the messaging menu
> go? Where should it go?

Yes, there is no direct fallback with libindicate, we allow applications
to handle that themselves.  Honestly, I'm not sure how that'd work.  It
seems like every case is a special case as for instance Evolution
doesn't have a notification area icon in the fallback case, and the
Empathy one is pretty different.

        --Ted

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