Re: gnome-shell application intergration

[Giovanni Campagna <scampa giovanni gmail com>]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Luuk de Waal Malefijt
<cooperfan gmail com> wrote:
> So, suppose I would like to support Emesene (Python MSN clone) in the
> messaging tray,
> what protocols, standards, guidelines and documents would I need to make
> this happen?
> - Luuk

It depends on what level of support you'd like. If you want the same
integration Telepathy-based
apps get, you should write (or extend) the Telepathy backend for MSN,
and move Emesene to
use Telepathy.
Documentation: http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/

If you want a similar support (but not using the same code), you can
include a Gnome Shell
extension along with Emesene. This needs to create a
MessageTray.Source representing a single
notification icon in the bottom-left, then you create
MessageTray.Notifications for indicating messages.
Any ClutterActor or StWidget (including GtkEmbed) can be added to
Notifications, meaning that you
are mostly free to design the best interface for Emesene (if say, you
want to support weird MSN features
like animoticons or voice messages).
Documentation: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Extensions and
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell/tree/js/ui/messageTray.js

Finally, if you simply want to show notifications of incoming
messages, you should open a DBus connection
to org.freedesktop.Notifications on the session bus. Such standard
notifications include a title, an icon,
some text (sometimes with basic HTML markup) and a set of actions that
are reported back to your app.
Documentation: http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/0.9/index.html

Giovanni

> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Giovanni Campagna
> <scampa giovanni gmail com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:41 AM,  <jhs jsschmid de> wrote:
>> > Hi!
>> >
>> >> I have tried Pidgin and sent myself messages from another computer/IM
>> >> account... and the message tray does not act the same way as it does
>> >> when your using empathy. With empathy, you are able to recieve msgs and
>> >> reply to messages straight from the message tray at the bottom instead
>> >> of
>> >> opening up your messenger window....
>> >
>> > Well, this is using telepathy in the background which is the messaging
>> > backend of empathy and as such it is indeed tightly integrated with
>> > empathy.
>>
>> Exactly. Empathy specific code has been removed long ago, replaced with
>> Telepathy.
>> Thus any application relying on Telepathy (Empathy, Kopete, Gnome
>> Games...)
>> gets automatic integration with Gnome Shell.
>>
>> >> Can anybody confirm support for "other ' alternate well known
>> >> messengers/music players for intergration in gnome-shell????
>> >
>> > In short, write a patch to your favourite application to integrate with
>> > gnome-shell. Nobody limits the applications that support gnome-shell but
>> > as of now only very few applications gained support.
>> > I am not an expert in the details of the message tray but I guess about
>> > 90% can be done in the application by supporting the new protocol while
>> > some things might require gnome-shell extensions.
>>
>> Actually, the protocol is not new, it is the same DBus interface every
>> desktop environment uses (org.freedesktop.Notifications), the same
>> exported by
>> notification-daemon and osd-notify, for example. Some hacks are applied
>> for
>> specific applications (XChat only, I suppose), but nothing else.
>> (This only applies to external notifications, not those generated
>> inside the shell,
>> by startup-notification, telepathy and extensions)
>>
>> > Regards,
>> > Johannes
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > gnome-shell-list mailing list
>> > gnome-shell-list gnome org
>> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
>> >
>>
>> Giovanni
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnome-shell-list mailing list
>> gnome-shell-list gnome org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
>
>