Comment 1 for bug 1065732

I agree that this signal would be convenient in some cases, but there are several problems with how multiple-instance applications would interact with the messaging menu:

If two instances of the same application are running, how should they appear in the messaging menu? Showing two application sections would be confusing, as there would be no way to tell which one activates which instance. Showing one section with two running indicators (triangles) would obfuscate which source originates in which instance.

Also, when no instance of the application is running, how many sections should be shown? When one instance unregisters from the messaging menu (as a result of the user unchecking a box in preferences), but another instance is still running, should the sections disappear from the menu?

In general, the type of applications that appear in the messaging menu should not allow multiple instances. I can't think of a reason why empathy, thunderbird, or smuxi would need a second instance. In fact, it would be great if this decision leads to more single-instance apps ;)

> I think this would be in the spirit of the new library to make it easy for application developers.

Definitely! However, we couldn't find good answers to the above questions and decided to de-facto require apps to be single-instance. Supporting single-instance is really easy on Linux (either with GtkApplication or even with D-Bus directly).

> Thanks for considering! Besides this, the new lib works great!

Thank you! And thanks for updating smuxi so quickly.