Re: A cross-platform status icon api

[James Henstridge <james jamesh id au>]

Matthias Clasen wrote:

>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.
>  
>
I believe part of the reason for having the notification area pop up the
balloons was to give a consistent visual appearance for the balloons.

If that isn't considered important, perhaps a simpler protocol would
make sense.  Perhaps something like this:

   1. icon tells tray that it wants to pop up a balloon
   2. icon receives permission from tray, and pops up balloon
   3. icon decides when to pop down balloon (timeout, user interaction,
      etc), and tells tray when it does so.

The above has its own problems though, since a hung notification icon
could prevent future notifications from appearing.

James.