unity-design team mailing list archive

[Scott Ritchie <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 06/14/2010 12:31 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Scott Ritchie wrote on 23/04/10 06:48:
> 
>> I like where you're going, but what do we do about interoperability?
> 
>> There's a hint in your post that we'll simply leave apps broken, stick
>> up our middle fingers, and tempt developers with our millions of users.
>> That may work for open source projects in our repository, but we need
>> to accept the reality that there will be programs that don't conform.
> 
>> The most obvious example is any software originally written for Windows
>> and running in Wine.  Wine uses XEmbed to create its own systray, and
>> the most reasonable place to put Wine's system tray is the notification
>> area.
>> ...
> 
> You mentioned at UDS that before Wine began inserting notification area
> items into the Gnome notification area, it put them in a separate
> window. I suggest that it return to doing that. Java applications will
> be in the same situation.
> 

I'm worried that if we still have empty space in the top panel and then
present a window not in the top panel users will immediately wonder why
the window isn't just embedded in the panel like it used to be (and is
on Windows.)

A window also has the normal inconveniences: to interact with it it must
first be focused on.  It will also be very small (holding only a single
icon of content in most cases, too small for window controls).

A window also means we need to worry about what to title it in the
bottom bar - for a user who doesn't even know they're running Wine,
spawning a "Wine System Tray" in the background and on the bottom is
likely to be missed.  Populating an item in the bottom bar also means
we'll have less space available for other apps - In fact I'm reasonably
certain we waste less space in the top panel than the bottom panel by
just using the system tray icons.

Basically, there's a reason Wine stopped using the systray window.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie