Please don’t always show icon

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

since 2.2, a quite large icon is show always. I think this is a waste of precious panel real-estate. Could you disable it again, or make it configurable?

Thanks for this useful bit of code,
Joachim

[Jean-Yves Lefort (jylefort)]

No. It's there to ensure that the applet will always be wide enough for comfortable mouse interaction, even when there is only one host configured.

[Joachim Breitner (nomeata)]

Sounds sensible. How about hiding it when there is more than one host?

[Joachim Breitner (nomeata)]

I have attached a patch that hides the icon when there are more than three hosts.

I should note that I use the applet on a vertical panel which makes the problem worse, as the icon is less wide than high.

Please consider this patch, or any other solution that reduces screen estate waste.

[Jean-Yves Lefort (jylefort)]

The cognitive overhead that a conditionally displayed icon adds is not justified in this case, since the amount of saved space is neglectible.

[Joachim Breitner (nomeata)]

I beg to differ, on my panel this icon makes the difference between „everything works nicely“ and „things are being pushed out when there are more than two notification area icons“.

Maybe you can make the icon not scale with the panel?

[Joachim Breitner (nomeata)]

(Not scale up. Scaling down is of course still required :-))

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

I support Joachim. I have five instances of the applet running with different parameters, or grouped by similarity using panel separators. Now I have 5 useless icons on my task bar, and my shortcuts are no longer visible in a 1280x1024 screen.

One of my groups has 3 links and the other one has 2 links. Unfortunately, in this cases, the patch is still useless for me.

Maybe an option in the Preferences window to voluntarily remove the icon from the panel?

[Joachim Breitner (nomeata)]

Hi Jean-Yves,

I’d like to follow up on this bug. As you can see I’m not the only one who is bothered by the icon. Can’t you think of a solution that makes both the novice user and the advanced user happy? Would you accept a patch that hides the icon if a certain gconf setting is set, even when it’s not configurable?

Thanks,
Joachim

[Jean-Yves Lefort (jylefort)]

Ok, while a single icon is not much of an issue, I agree that several icons (as described by Octavio Alvarez) can be annoying. I might add a GConf setting for disabling the icon.

Note that this setting would have to be global, shared by all applets (eg. /apps/link-monitor-applet/show-icon), since the GConf settings of a particular applet are really hard to find (they're in /apps/panel/applets/applet_n/prefs, so one has to visit all the applet_n directories to find the right one).

[Joachim Breitner (nomeata)]

Thanks, that’s all I’m asking for!

[Ciprian Popovici (cprpop)]

FWIW, I also see this as a problem and I would love a fix of any kind.

If I may make a suggestion. Dispense with the icon altogether and simply impose a minimal width for the monitor area (whatever's considered suitable). Make this minimal width a Gconf setting, not present in the Preferences. People who know about it and wish to do so can set it to zero or whatever they want. It seems to me this would please everyone.

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

Here is a *temporary* fix that only shows the icon when there is zero or one host configured. Please note that it is temporary in the meaning that modifying the .gob files needs the yet unreleased gob2 2.0.16 to compile, so this only patches the files at build/src. This allows the fixed l-m-a to build and install using "./jb build" under the current source from apt-get.

This patch is not intended to go into development.

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

I am resending the temporary patch, since it went wrong.

Patch with "patch -p1 < patch.txt" on the link-monitor-applet-3.0 directory, then build with "./jb build", install with "./jb install" and restart session (or kill gnome-panel?)

[Peter Rullmann (prullmann)]

I also find the Icon a waste of space, especially when having 3 or more hosts to monitor. I'd opt for the gconf-option, but wouldn't mind having a config option for it in the prefs. I think it is useful enough.

[wirespot (wirespot)]

In order to apply the patch on Jaunty do this:

* get the source and unpack it somewhere

* copy the patch file under the main source dir

* optionally, edit it and change the condition; I changed it to < 1,
  so the icon only shows when there's zero monitors

* apply the patch it like this, from the source dir:
  patch -p1 < l-m-a-3.0-conditional-icon.patch

* install packages needed for compilation:
  sudo apt-get install libgnomeui-dev libpanel-applet2-dev libglade2-dev
* compile like this: ./jb build

* Don't do ./jb install if you used the vanilla source! Instead, look under build/src/ and you'll find a link-monitor-applet binary. Copy it to /usr/lib/link-monitor-applet/. Backup the other one first. The new one will need to have changed rights like this:
  chown root.root link-monitor-applet
  chmod u+s link-monitor-applet

Yeah, it needs suid root. :/ Which probably deserves a bug report on its own, since I find it hard to believe you can't ping stuff unless you're root, whereas being suid root magnifies any potential security problems the applet may ever have.

[wirespot (wirespot)]

BTW, what more exactly is needed before this issue is fixed? There's a patch and it works.

I consider a "less than 2" condition perfectly reasonable, since two monitors constitute a big enough surface for usability reasons. (I would argue even one monitor is enough, but fine, let's make it 2.) Personally I would also rather have a runtime-customizable option, but this hardcoded one is almost as good.

So... it's been a year, what more do we have to do to have this simple and straightforward improvement propagated into the official packages?

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

L-m-a needs GOB 2.0.16 to compile from scratch. In Jaunty, the package gob2 provides 2.0.15-1. It is 2.0.16 in Karmic, though.

In order to workaround that limitation, the patch I provided is applied against the already generated GOB files, so in its current form it can't be pushed in to the repositories.

[wirespot (wirespot)]

Which means, if I understand correctly, that it can be pushed for inclusion into Karmic, right? Which would be just as well, since Karmic is coming in a month or so.

[wirespot (wirespot)]

Sorry, I got it now. But it doesn't matter either way, because it's a trivial patch. The verbatim patch provided here is not essential. It consists of finding three lines in the source code and adding an if{} block around them. Come on.

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

For me, hiding it for > 2 icons is plain useless. I attach a sample of my use. I would go for a fully-tested, GConf option on more than a variable number of icons.

[Joachim Breitner (nomeata)]

Re #20: It seems you are running several instances of l-m-a to get some visual grouping. Maybe it would be cleaner if it supported grouping different hosts by itself, so that you only need to run one instance?

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

Offtopic: Yes, it might be better. I don't know for sure. I don't think it is easy to implement, though. Besides visual grouping, the other main reason for me to group is that the chart-statistics-tooltip becomes too big to fit on the screen.

[wirespot (wirespot)]

Not to mention the ping scale as well, which is why I place mine in different applets. A single scale means that either the extreme lows or extreme highs are undistinguishable from each other.

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

I am afraid link-monitor-applet is no longer maintained, or is it?

[Spheerys (contact-spheerys)]

I hope this patch will be present in the next release :)

[wirespot (wirespot)]

And it only took 2 years! :)

[wirespot (wirespot)]

For those who don't want to wait another two years for the fix to actually make it to their desktop:

1) Download the following two .deb packages from Debian:
http://packages.debian.org/sid/i386/link-monitor-applet/download
http://packages.debian.org/sid/all/link-monitor-applet-common/download

Note: If you don't use i386, please pick your correct link-monitor package:
http://packages.debian.org/sid/link-monitor-applet
(The link-monitor-common package is architecture-agnostic.)

2) Install them with `sudo dpkg -i *.deb`.

3) Enjoy.