Reintroduce non-appindicator support

[Michael Kogan]

Hello there!

First of all, big thanks for Caffeine, a very handy tool nowadays. I'm using it on Arch Linux with Xfce as DE.

In rev. 499 non-appindicator support has been dropped. I would like to request to reintroduce it. Though the main focus for Caffeine is probably Ubuntu and Unity as DE, it is widely used in various distributions in combination with various DEs. Many of them don't make use of appindicators. I don't want to start a discussion on the usability of appindicators, but as a matter of fact many people outside of the Ubuntu world don't use them.

So far, all apps offering a tray icon, that I am using, support both appindicator and the standard systray (e.g. Shutter, Transmission, Pidgin, Skype, Dropbox, ownCloud, etc.). In particular, an action is assignable to the left click on tray icon other than opening the context menu, if the standard systray is used. For Caffeine the left click action is particularly comfortable since it allows you to switch power saving on and off by a single click. But after rev. 499 it just opens the context menu, same as the right mouse button.

I don't know the reason for dropping non-appindicator support. As far as I know, before rev. 499 the tray icon worked both in a appindicator environment and in a standard systray. So I don't see any advantage of removing non-appindicator support other than cleaning up the code. But cleaning up the code shouldn't be a higher priority than offering essential functionality, in my opinion.

Thanks for your attention and happy Christmas holidays,
Michael

[Reuben Thomas (rrt)]

Strictly speaking, only non-libappindicator support has been dropped, the reason being that it makes the code easier to maintain. libappindicator will fall back to other methods if appindicators are not available.

I don't use appindicators myself (I use a GNOME desktop).

[Michael Kogan (michael-kogan)]

Hello Thomas, thanks for your comment. Caffeine is still working in non-libappindicator environments, if I had been too sloppy in this point. But the fall back of libappindicator is much less comfortable than the old non-libappindicator implementation, as I described in the bug report. The behaviour of libappindicator and its fall back is good for tablets or smartphones where there is no right click and therefore opening the context menu, the more functional action, is put onto the left click. But although tablets and smartphones might win the race, currently still many people are using machines with proper mice and here libappindicator is clearly a loss in functionality.

But I'm drifting away into a discussion of libappindicator's functionality/usability. The more interesting question is, whether maintaining the non-libappindicator part of the code is that messy that the code needs to be cleaned up even at the cost of lower usability. This is what you as developer have to decide, of course. And one thing to take into account when finding the right decision is what the users actually would love to use. For example in the Arch Linux community many people are using light DEs, therefore a package of rev. 498 already exists, since people want to have proper non-libappindicator support.

Sorry for the longish comment
Michael