unity-design team mailing list archive

[Conscious User <conscioususer@xxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Let me start the discussion by saying I agree with Matthew:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/packageselection-desktop-n-coherent-behavior-for-apps-in-messagingmenu
http://design.canonical.com/2011/03/quit/
"The engineering solution here is for messaging clients to
split out the code that checks for new messages, so that it
can optionally run even while the rest of the application
is not."

However, I don't think this separation is coming
anytime soon. Meanwhile, for several releases now
Evolution is being the only inconsistent application in
the Messaging Menu, the only that quits on close, the
only one that needs to be present on both the MM and the
taskbar (soon to be Unity Launcher).

Thunderbird is getting Messaging Menu support with the
exact same problem, and to make things worse we will now
not only have redundancy of presence, but also redundancy
of information presentation:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/evolution-indicator/trunk/revision/77
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/thunderbird-getting-some-unity-love/

Evolution/Thunderbird should be on the launcher, or the
messaging menu, but *not* on both of them.

I don't expect a patch that modularizes Evolution or
Thunderbird dropping from the sky, so we need a short
term solution instead of continuing to ship the
current, horribly redundant, situation.

My suggestion is to either accept Geoff Goehle's patch:

https://code.launchpad.net/~goehle/evolution-indicator/dont-quit-on-close/+merge/42151

or to remove Evolution from the Messaging Menu entirely,
as it can be argued that email is not something you
should be interested in being constantly notified
about anyway and Evolution consumes a lot of memory.
(see pitti's comments in the first link)

Thoughts?