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Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s)

From Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de>
Newsgroups linux.debian.devel
Subject Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s)
Date 2018-04-04 15:50 +0200
Message-ID <vAQXw-772-15@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
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Hi Ian,

On  Di 03 Apr 2018 20:11:43 CEST, Ian Jackson wrote:

> Mike Gabriel writes ("Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s)"):
>> On  Do 29 Mär 2018 15:54:26 CEST, Simon McVittie wrote:
>> > Is Ayatana AppIndicator a reasonable exit strategy for escaping from
>> > XEmbed-based tray icons, which are increasingly poorly supported and have
>> > no Wayland implementation?
>>
>> Yes, absolutely! And, it allows one to have more fiddly widgets in
>> those system tray menus then, too (like sliders, calendars, switches,
>> etc.).
>
> [...]
>
> I have two questions:
>
>  1. Is there some risk that trayer will stop being able to
>     handle applets from things like network-manager ?
>     If so what should I replace it with ?

Not in the foreseeable future, I guess (except from trayer being GTK-2).

The fancy widgets (sliders, etc.) for now appear in _system_  
indicators, only. They are special indicators in MATE, XFCE  
(optionally), possibly Budgie (optionally), that have a special  
rendering and don't use the StatusNotifierItem implementation. (And  
they don't work, yet, on Debian, only on Ubuntu, because they require  
some Ubuntu'ish GTK-3 patch).

The AppIndicator based applications only use menu items (widgets) that  
have been used in Xembed based systray menus, so far.

> I also have an (symbiosisware, so as yet unreleased) program which
> uses tk-tktray (package `tktray'), and embeds an X window belonging to
> a different executable.

>  2. Is there some risk that tktray will not work with the
>     answer to (1) ?  If so what should I replace it with ?

tk-tktray is an API for Xembed'ding a systray icon. This will continue  
to work, as long as a desktop env provides Xembed support. However, I  
wouldn't code new projects based on tk-tkray.

> Answers to 1 should not suppose that I want to change my window
> manager or adopt a full-on `desktop environment' or a `panel' (unless

The window manager is +/- totally unrelated to the topic.

> perhaps the panel can be made to be as small as its contents).  My
> window manager is vtwm.

Some weeks ago, I uploaded the vala-panel package to unstable. It  
supports AppIndicators and Xembed based applications alike. It could  
well need some more testers and feedback. However, it is a promising  
project esp. for people that don't want to use a specific desktop env  
but rather assemble their own working environment.

> Answers to 2 should ideally suppose that I want to continue to use
> XID-based window embedding to make an applet which contains the window
> from a separate X client.

I am not sure, I am fully getting the application design, you have in  
mind here. Do you mean X-embedding (this is about icons and systray  
and the icons have menus and submenus) or reparenting? With X11  
reparenting you can reparent X11 application 1 into X11 application 2.  
(xterm has it even as cmdline option).

> I note that neither trayer nor tktray seem to involve any of the
> libraries being discussed in this thread.  Is that because an
> `indicator' is not the same as an `applet', or is it due to churn, or
> something else ?

It is because AppIndicator does not do X-embedding at all. And for  
X-embedding, you merely new some libX11 calls. AppIndicator / SNI is  
about an application (written in GTK, Qt, what-not) sending its menu  
tree and systray icon over DBus and on the other end a desktop env  
applet (renderer) that pumps this menu structure into the panel (your  
elsewhere appropriate).

I you have more question, please ask. Thanks for the discussion!
Mike
-- 

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Thread

Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <sunweaver@debian.org> - 2018-03-29 15:20 +0200
  Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2018-03-29 16:00 +0200
    Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2018-03-29 23:30 +0200
      Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2018-03-30 01:30 +0200
        Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2018-03-30 20:10 +0200
          Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-04-03 20:20 +0200
            Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2018-04-04 15:30 +0200
              Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) [and 1 more messages] Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-04-04 16:00 +0200
                Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) [and 1 more  messages] Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2018-04-04 16:50 +0200
      Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-04-03 20:20 +0200
        Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2018-04-04 15:50 +0200
          Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2018-04-04 16:10 +0200
          Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-04-04 16:10 +0200
    Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2018-04-06 14:50 +0200
    Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2018-04-06 15:30 +0200
  Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org> - 2018-03-29 19:00 +0200
    Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-04-03 20:30 +0200
      Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <sunweaver@debian.org> - 2018-04-04 15:20 +0200
  Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Clément Hermann <nodens@nodens.org> - 2018-04-06 16:20 +0200
    Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-04-06 16:50 +0200
    Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <sunweaver@debian.org> - 2018-04-06 22:50 +0200
      Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-04-09 15:30 +0200
        Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <sunweaver@debian.org> - 2018-04-10 15:00 +0200
          Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-04-10 16:00 +0200
            Re: Upcoming shift to Ayatana (App)Indicator(s) Mike Gabriel <sunweaver@debian.org> - 2018-04-14 01:40 +0200

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