Re: A cross-platform status icon api

[Matthias Clasen <mclasen redhat com>]

On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 10:02 +0800, James Henstridge wrote:
> Matthias Clasen wrote:
> 
> >- There are quite a few details which the implementation currently 
> >  doesn't handle currently:
> >  * the bubble needs to be repositioned if the user changes panel    
> >    orientation
> >  * the bubble "stem" needs to be redrawn if the tray icon moves 
> >    because another status icon appears/disappears or because the
> >    tray moves inside the panel
> >  * Concurrent notifications from different status icons should probably
> >    avoid each other
> >  * if the panel is not sticky, does the bubble go away if the user
> >    switches to a desktop without the panel ?
> >  
> >
> These issues sound like they would be easiest to address with
> cooperation from the notification area itself (which I guess is what
> happens on Windows).  Maybe some extensions to the trayicon spec would
> be appropriate here.
> 

Yes, that's true. The system tray spec has some really ugly
send-notification-text-in-chunks-as-client-messages protocol, which 
supports just simple texts and timeouts, but not titles and icons, and
there is no feedback about user actions.

I'm not sure whats the better forward is here, either inventing a
complicated protocol to allow rich enough notification bubbles be
implemented in the notification area, or trying to fix some of the
complications outlined above on the tray icon side, possibly with
some help from the notification area.

Matthias