More on DBusMenu integration for Kopete and KNetworkManager

Aurélien Gâteau aurelien.gateau at canonical.com
Tue Feb 16 16:53:49 GMT 2010


Hi,

During last Kubuntu meeting, it was decided that a method should be
added to kdelibs so that applications could opt out of DBusMenu if it
was causing trouble, for example because of the use of custom widgets in
their tray menu.

We listed Kopete and KNetworkManager as the two problematic applications.

Well... my team was not enthusiastic at this idea, because they were
afraid it would make DBusMenu optional. Having failed to convince them,
I decided to talk with the Kopete and KNetworkManager devs to see if we
could change these applications to use standard menu items instead (I
should have kept you informed about that, sorry).

My proposal for Kopete was to turn the "Edit Message" item into a
classic dialog. It has been well received by Kopete developers so I went
on and implemented it. The patch has been sent to Kopete ML and, pending
any objection, should be committed soon.

My proposal for KNetworkManager (KNM) was to turn the connexion list
into a dialog as well. Will Stephenson (KNM main developer) didn't like
this idea as he was seeing no benefit in DBusMenu for the KNM standalone
binary since it is unlikely to be used under GNOME. He suggested to help
out getting the Plasma applet version fixed instead so that it could
replace the binary version. This solution avoids the DBusMenu problem
and is more useful for KDE and Kubuntu in the long run.

It turns out that next week is Tokamak 4, the annual Plasma sprint.
During this sprint, Will and Sebas will be working hard on the KNM
Plasma applet, so Will invited me to join them (remotely). My manager
agreed on this: I will be working with them on the applet during this week.

Should this fails, the fall-back I can imagine is adding a way to
blacklist the KNM binary from the SystemTray applet so that the
SystemTray applet does not use DBusMenu for KNM. It might make sense to
implement such a blacklist system anyway as an hidden configuration
option, for applications we overlooked.

Only remaining question is: would you be ready to switch to the Plasma
applet version of KNM for Lucid assuming we get it to run reliably?


Aurélien



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