About message indicator and launchers

[Tom M. Shaw]

On Wednesday 09 September 2009 02:38:11 am Aurélien Gâteau wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> There has been quite some discussion on the Ayatana mailing list about
> whether including application launchers in the message indicator applet
> was a good idea.
> 
> I just discussed this with my manager, who told me that whether the
> message indicator plasmoid should include launchers is something the
> Kubuntu community should decide.
> 
> Aurelien
> 

I'm not even sure where to begin and I don't want to seem all negative but I'm 
really not understanding the point of this new and separate notification 
system. If something is wrong with what KDE has now why not change or fix it? 
If it's about looking like what the GNOME desktop is going to use then why 
bother, let the people that want that look use the GNOME desktop. I don't see 
the purpose of having two different desktops if they're going to end up 
looking the same. There should be a real need and not just a 'do what they're 
doing' reason.

I read again the original email and went and looked at the few screen shots of 
a notification and the configuration and I'm not really seeing much besides 
some settings and the look and placement. Couldn't all of these be put into  
the existing system?

I triggered some things here that caused notifications and I really can't find 
what's wrong unless people object to the look or placement but I'm pretty sure 
I could even change that if I really wanted to. If something passive pops up 
it does so and goes away even if it might have a button to do something on it 
like a person coming online and you can click to chat for example. If the 
button is an issue why not just make a setting for the button to be optional 
on the passive ones. As far as queuing them this happens now with active ones 
but it's because they are saved in the message indicator but there's no reason 
passive ones couldn't be queued within this too since the passive part really 
only applies to your seeing the initial notification since saying it has to go 
away forever even if seen or not is a bit of a stretch in reality. Even if the 
last 20 or 50 passive ones were saved a person could come back and see what 
happened while away and clear them out. If these notices aren't so critical or 
important you have to wonder what the point of having them at all if you can't 
associate actions with them or see them after the fact.

Now about the application launchers in the message indicator. This doesn't 
even make sense. Are they tray icons? Non-running apps? What's the purpose. 
Google doesn't give me a clue to what they are or where they originated from. 
I see mention of people saying how kopete doesn't have the icon in the system 
tray but it has the icon in the message indicator now. I can hide any or all 
icons in the system tray now so what's the purpose of hiding them somewhere 
else?

Again I don't want to be all negative and your work can be appreciated but 
this whole thing just seems like a case of making the same thing in a 
different color so it's just something different. KDE has a good system so why 
not make it better instead of making a new one? Also I think it would be a 
good idea to gather more feedback from users instead of developers since well 
developers don't have the typical work habits that a user has so things tend 
to get over engineered to put it nicely. It really wouldn't hurt all of you to 
step back and take a look at what you are working on in all areas and think 
how it really helps the person installing kubuntu for the first time or the 
one that has been using it since day one. 

Tom