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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Proposal: kde guide systray update
From:       Waldo Bastian <bastian () kde ! org>
Date:       2003-02-04 10:43:51
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On Tuesday 04 February 2003 01:26, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:

[rearranging your paragraphs a little]
> the mac osX dock does what you suggest regarding button icons calling up
> already running processes and thereby gets rid of the need for a seperate
> system tray. 

It combines starting tasks (start buttons) with resuming/managing tasks 
(taskbar). Although that might look like very similar activities on paper, I 
think that in practice there is a very real distinction between the two and 
that it has pushed it too far by it's suggestion that that distinction isn't 
so important.

> i don't think this is a great way to get messages to the user however

I don't think the MacOsX panel tries very hard to get messages to the user.

> interesting points.. other differences between the systray and the panel is
> that a user has the ability to add or remove buttons from their panel at
> will but the systray is a place set aside for any application to put and
> remove an active icon.

So instead of considering the system tray a collection of ever present user 
interface items, you think a system tray entry should be more a close 
reflection of a (dynamic) background process (not so much a unix process)
and as such tied to the lifetime of this background process?

Or do you think it should be seen as the reflection of an application /  
background unix process?

I make a difference between the two because if you take e.g. KWeather, then 
the "dynamic process" that KWeather reflects is the weather, which is ever 
present. The application / unix process is the thing with a pid and 
"kweather" behind it. It gets killed at the end of your KDE session. (And 
possibly resumed by session management at your next KDE session.)

Actually, I can't think of any real-life dynamic process that you would like 
to have reflected in the system tray that is short lived. Maybe a score-board 
that indicates the score for a sports match, but would you want that to 
disappear after a match is over?

> and that in my mind is the express purpose of the system tray:
>
> allowing an application to provide messages from the user

I don't think that alone justifies a system tray entry. Why couldn't the 
application use a passive popup message for that?

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian@kde.org -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- bastian@suse.com

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