unity-design team mailing list archive

[Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 18/05/10 16:54, Jeremy Nickurak wrote:
> So is there any reason the messaging menu couldn't be a regular
> indicator? My gut says it should probably be a system indicator, but
> I'd really really want this to fall-back into the notification area
> anyways.

It would be possible to do that. But it would be quite a lot of work,
and would only really be relevant for Gnome 2.x. We don't know where
GNOME Shell will go with indicators: they rejected the current version
of Ayatana indicators on the grounds that they intend to implement
something different. It's unusual to reject code for vapour, but there
you go :-)

Perhaps in future, when the APIs have settled, the GNOME Shell team will
be more open to it. Alternatively, since GNOME itself needs a netbook UI
as well, we see many projects supporting the Ayatana indicators directly
regardless of GNOME Shell's decisions: detecting when they are available
and using them appropriately.

> If the messaging menu, and other indicator features are to be
> supported by upstream, I believe we need to reduce the barrier of
> adoption. If gnome-shell, kde, xfce, and every other random
> window-manager/desktop-environment (which almost universally support
> the notification spec) could have all the same indicators and features
> that the ubuntu offers, without having to adopt/implement a new
> applet/protocol, we'll have a much better chance of getting the
> community at large on board.

Both Kubuntu and Ubuntu will have the messaging menu for the foreseeable
future. We *are* working with KDE on App Indicators and aiming to have
broad adoption for those, as well as features like Window Indicators and
the key Category Indicators (sound, messaging etc). We could not be more
open to collaboration: we've approached key individuals and
organisations and charted a clear path for each of these pieces, we've
also published the code under appropriate licenses of course, and mapped
out the timeframes to API stability. Key elements of the API's are being
debated and published as FreeDesktop.org standards.

Mark

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