#276 Minimize to System Tray

[smaragdus]

gtk-gnutella has an option to "Show a status icon" but it would be great if gtk-gnutella could be minimized/closed to system tray completely (without appearing in the task bar). This will be a simple option but will save task bar space and for me it would be more convenient to minimize/close gtk-gnutella to tray.

[Jeroen Asselman]

Could you elaborate this suggestion further?

Is this what you are suggesting:

• Tray icon Mouse left click -> Minimize to tray
• Tray icon Mouse right click -> Show current popup menu
• Window manager close button minimize to tray.
  You'd have to choose close explicitly from the gtk-gnutella menu to have it shutdown.

Only when the systray icon is available of course.

[smaragdus]

I mean an option in gtk-gnutella Preferences to close gtk-gnutella to tray so 'Minimize' button sends gtk-gnutella to task-bar while 'Close' button sends it to tray (when 'Show a status icon' is enabled).

[Christian Biere]

"smaragdus" smaragdus@users.sf.net wrote:

I mean an option in gtk-gnutella Preferences to close gtk-gnutella to tray so 'Minimize'
button sends gtk-gnutella to task-bar while 'Close' button sends it to tray (when 'Show a > status icon' is enabled).

I know some applications behave that way. However, I dislike it for two reasons.
First, it breaks standard behavior:

Either [x] Close or [_] Minimize doesn't work as it used to and still does for 99,9%
of all applications.

Second, under certain circumstances[*] the systray icon is not visible at all. This is
something we cannot check. So if a user minimized gtk-gnutella to the tray by clicking
on of the usual window buttons, there would be no way to get gtk-gnutella back
on the screen. So by having to click the icon in the tray to hide/unhide gtk-gnutella,
we can at least be sure, the icon is actually there.

[*] Don't ask me about details but Ubuntu, Gnome or whoever decided that only
known or trusted applications are allowed to show an icon in the systray. Look
at this, for example:
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/how-to-re-enable-notification-area.html

This might also apply to systems where the systray icon stuff is implemented as
a dummy e.g., I have no idea whether it works on Windows, Mac OS or every Window
Manager on Unix at all.

[Christian Biere]

This is already implemented in version 0.98.3. You just have to click the tray icon to hide/unhide the gtk-gnutella window.

[smaragdus]

Thanks for the tip.
However I came upon a different problem- gtk-gnutella crashed several times when I was trying to change the default download and upload directories. Since the problem persisted I un-installed gtk-gnutella 1.1.0 and installed the previous version- gtk-gnutella 1.0.1 but to no avail. I installed version 1.1.0 again and after several more crashes I finally managed to choose the default download/upload directories. What happened- when I was trying to browse to the desired directory- for example- D:\ - D:\Music - D:\Music\Web - D:\Music\Web\gtk-gnutella, the program became unresponsive and after a while closed without any error messages, it simply disappeared from task-bar and from system tray and I could see in the task manager that it was no longer running. However after several attempts I finally managed to set the download/upload directories. I don't know what was the cause of these crashes. My system- Windows 8 x64.

[Christian Biere]

As this unrelated to the feature request, please open a bug report.
Try launching gtk-gnutella from a terminal windows as follows:

gtk-gnutella --log-stderr C:\temp\gtkg.txt

Assuming the directory C:\temp exists. There should be some helpful
log messages in C:\temp\gtkg.txt. Otherwise, debugging will be
difficult.

On Tue, 26 Aug 2014 14:12:59 +0000
"smaragdus" smaragdus@users.sf.net wrote:

Thanks for the tip.
However I came upon a different problem- gtk-gnutella crashed several times when I was trying to change the default download and upload directories. Since the problem persisted I un-installed gtk-gnutella 1.1.0 and installed the previous version- gtk-gnutella 1.0.1 but to no avail. I installed version 1.1.0 again and after several more crashes I finally managed to choose the default download/upload directories. What happened- when I was trying to browse to the desired directory- for example- D:\ - D:\Music - D:\Music\Web - D:\Music\Web\gtk-gnutella, the program became unresponsive and after a while closed without any error messages, it simply disappeared from task-bar and from system tray and I could see in the task manager that it was no longer running. However after several attempts I finally managed to set the download/upload directories. I don't know what was the cause of these crashes. My system- Windows 8 x64.

[smaragdus]

Hello Christian,

I could not find a file 'gtkg.txt' and 'C:\temp' doesn't exist.
gtk-gnutella still crashes when I try to add directories to Upload and when I try to change Download directory. When I try to navigate to the desired folder gtk-gnutella freezes (becomes unresponsive) and after about 10 seconds it exits.

However I have managed to find a workaround. First- these crashes happen with versions 1.1.0 and 1.1.1. What helps in my situation (my system- Windows 8.1)- I uninstall gtk-gnutella, install version 1.0.0 (thank goodness I keep the installer) and after I set the Upload and Download directories I install version 1.1.1 and it works fine since the Upload and Download directories have been set by gtk-gnutella version 1.0.0. I do not know what is so different in versions 1.1.0 and 1.1.1, but using these latest versions I cannot set the Download and Upload folders. But the problem does not appear in version 1.0.0, I am 100% sure about that.

I have a question- is it possible that you create a portable version of gtk-gnutella that writes all its settings in its own folder, which could be run from an external flash drive?

Regards