Add option to hide persistent notification icon and add support for the indicator-applet

[Juha Siltala]

Binary package hint: ekiga

Ekiga has a persistent icon in the notification area. This is against the GNOME HIG, and there should be an option to disable the icon. Only events (incoming calls and messages) should be notified about. Instead, Ekiga should add support for Ubuntu's new indicator-applet.

[Ken VanDine (ken-vandine)]

This would indeed be very cool!

[Yannick Defais (sevmek)]

Hello,

As far as I know, the Ubuntu philosophy about the indicator-applet is to forbid any action. Thus you'll be notified about an incoming call, but you wont be able to accept or refuse it.

Beside that, if there is no icon, how could you possibly show the main window to the user to allow him to place a call?

Finally, the Gnome HIG allow persistant icon:
http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/desktop-notification-area.html.en
"Only core GNOME programs may perpetually display an icon in the status area."

Best regards,
Yannick

[Juha Siltala (topyli)]

On Wed, 2009-04-01 at 14:27 +0000, Yannick Defais wrote:

> As far as I know, the Ubuntu philosophy about the indicator-applet is to
> forbid any action. Thus you'll be notified about an incoming call, but
> you wont be able to accept or refuse it.

The popup only shows you a notification and indeed does not allow any
action. but the indicator-applet is a separate panel applet which is
clickable and opens the recent message, allowing you to reply.

However, refusing a call would indeed be a problem that needs further
tought.

> Beside that, if there is no icon, how could you possibly show the main
> window to the user to allow him to place a call?

The indicator applet has a dropdown menu listing relevant applications
(currently Pidgin and Evolution) and allows you to open the main window
just like the persistent notification area icon does if enabled.

In effect, the applet's purpose is to consolidate all these persistent
icons into one.

> Finally, the Gnome HIG allow persistant icon:
> http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/desktop-notification-area.html.en
> "Only core GNOME programs may perpetually display an icon in the status area."

It does allow this, although it's debatable if Ekiga is "core gnome",
the concept of core is not clear to me here. What the HIG says clearly
is that the persistent icon should be optional, altough the "core"
concept appears there again.

Still, making the icon optional has not been a problem for Pidgin and
Gajim, which have UIs very similar to Ekiga.

--
Juha Siltala

[Yannick Defais (sevmek)]

Hi,

Is there a solution to choose action: Accept or refuse the call? Having to click is several places to perform this action seems odd to me. Think about Ekiga as a phone IRL, it should be simple to use and quick; people calling wont wait too much for the user to figure out how to use the desktop.

Marking this bug as incomplete.

Best regards,
Yannick

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[Cyprian Guerra (cyprian-guerra)]

For Evolution there are actually two positions in the Indication Applet:
* Evolution Mail
* Inbox [number_of_unread_e-mails]

The first one runs the Evolution / opens Evolution window. The second one does the same as the former but appears only when Evolution is running (when Evolution's off there's a description string "Read and write emails" instead). That's a waste of interface space, however, in case of Ekiga, there can be:

- when Ekiga is off:
* Ekiga
* Talk to people over the internet

- when Ekiga is running:
* Ekiga

- when there's a call incoming (indicator applet changes colour and the sound is played):
* Ekiga (answer a call)
* Ekiga (decline a call)

If you don't consider the above solution (which works similar for pidgin/telepathy) functional enough "incoming call" event can be treated as a special dialogue box - whenever there's an incoming call and Ekiga isn't in "Do Not Disturb" state, pop-up an Answer/Decline dialogue box in the middle of the screen or under the system tray. That's the most intuitive solution I can think of - don't know how much it bends the rules of Gnome HIG. Doesn't seem to bend anything to me.

Cheers!

[Yannick Defais (sevmek)]

Hi,

The notification system in Ubuntu has evolved. It seems the right tools for the job is a "Morphing window".
For more details, see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotificationDesignGuidelines

Feel free to propose a patch to upstream...

Best regards,
Yannick