[E-devel] Status Notifier Specification

[Thomas G. <th...@gs...>]

Hi,

in the past the topic system tray has been discussed often on the
list, including the argument, that the FDO SysTray spec is to flawed
to have the SysTray module included in the main E package.
Now the module is there afterall - nonetheless still ugly as hell. :)
Some months ago a KDE developer propsed the StatusNotifier
Specification to replace this - and more.
Despite fixing some flaws that the SysTray Spec has it also introduces
a lot more complexity and features, including being dbus-based and
having proper ARGB support.
Apparently the KDE developers have already implemented it fully and
start migrating to it, and ubuntu, being the biggest Gnome-based
distro pushes towards it for Gnome.
I noticed, that also first non-KDE and non-Gnome apps start using it,
so it appear that it might replace SysTray in the long run.

It might be useful for E to support it, because we can git rid of
SysTray as it won't be staying anyway - also it seems that it is
supposed to offer a lot of extra features that are currently
implemented in desktop specific widgets, i.e. the E modules: mixer,
battery, cpufreq, ...

I don't know if you have already seen the Spec, nor do I know if it is
useful or wise for E to implement.
But so or so, I think it would be useful for the E developers to
review it and join the discussion to make it fit for E (if it
doesn't), as long as it's not final.
Also it seems that it does make quite some things right that didn't
fit with SysTray. Being dbus based there is no need for ugly toolkit
based menus in the tray and so on, also E has dbus support anyway.

Here are the links to the discussion on the FDO mailinglist and the
official Spec:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2010-January/011196.html
http://www.notmart.org/misc/statusnotifieritem/index.html