bzr notification icon should not be permanent

[Lionel Dricot]

Like the name suggests, the notification area is used for "notification".

In this regard, the bzr notification icon should only appear when there is a notification. Sitting there, cluttering the notification area and eating screen space only to tell you that there's nothing to tell is, at best, useless. (it's also a violation of the gnome HIG).

Proposed solution : do not display any icon where there's nothing to say. (just like the printer icon that appears only where you are currently printing)

[Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer)]

It's not just there for notification, also to allow you to for example enable gateway to LAN and announcing branches on the LAN.

Perhaps it should just be disabled by default until the user enables it rather than enabled until the user disables it.

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

"It's not just there for notification,"

Then it should not be in the *notification* area. I know that notification area abuse is pretty common but it should not be an excuse.

An icon in the notification are should disappear after a given user action (or a certain lapse of time) but should never never be persistent.

[wouter bolsterlee (wbolster)]

The bzr-notify process is started automatically upon login (through a FDO autostart file) and permanently takes up space in my notification area, while it is clearly not a notification icon that needs my attention (and then disappears). The only way to turn it off is to uninstall bzr-gtk from my Debian system, which I do not want either...

Furhermore, the "Gateway to LAN" checkbox is totaly incomprehensible to me. What does it do and why does it need my attention?

(Sure, I removed the file from /etc/xdg, but the problem remains)

[wouter bolsterlee (wbolster)]

Furthermore, the icon does not respond to left clicks at all. This is a pretty serious usability issue.

[Seth (bugs-sehe)]

+1 I hate this icon. It is screamy (bright yellow 'warning' sign),

I have no use for it. No left clicks... What the heck. What should I get notified of anyway?

What is gateway to LAN? Sounds like something that I wouldn't like advertised (security) at all.

I use bzr locally and push over sftp to backup locations. I have no use for notifications.

I have a use for bzr-gtk (visualize, gdiff etc) so I'd like to have an easy 'off-switch' (perhaps on the left click hahaha)

[Philip Belemezov (phible)]

+1 to remove the icon, it's annoying.

[Brian Downing (bd-launchpad)]

Absolutely agreed. I only use bzr rarely, but do use the visualization tools when I do. Having this package permanently waste screen real-estate (and in a visually loud way too) is stupid.

Perhaps separating out the visualization tools that are usable from a command line from the desktop integration would be a good idea. I have no desire to ever configure a VCS from my desktop.

[Gustavo Narea (gnarea)]

Since everybody, including myself, hates the icon, why isn't it removed?

Cheers.

[Lee Braiden (lee-braiden)]

Just want to add that I also hate this (and came here looking for this exact bug which I would have written up of course, if it didn't already exist). It's not just that the icon doesn't provide anything useful and takes up real-estate... it's taking up memory, and creating vulnerabilities by running! Why does this exist? I first noticed it the other day when installing tortoisebzr on windows. There, I figured it was some sort of horrible background caching hack to get around a performance issue, like oo(o)quickstart etc. After reinstalling ubuntu and installing bazaar-gtk, I was even more horrified to find the same thing in bazaar's "native" environment.

Seriously... I don't want the lan stuff. I don't need anything preloaded or cached (unless it's the only temporary way you can get nautilus-gtk working at a decent speed). I certainly don't need it running plugins for avahi and dbus and storing "netrc credentials" whatever security risk they are. The identity options look handy, but I hardly need to edit these on a regular basis, and it's not clear what scope any edits in this systray icon have. Do they affect the current project? My global config? Future work? Just the bazaar gtk stuff? Just the LAN stuff whatever that is?

Yeah. In summary, this applet thing does not give any clear reason for its existence. It's certainly not running according to any work I've asked bazaar to do. It might as well be malware, as far as I'm concerned. Please remove it, at least by default, document it better, and ASK people whether they want it running, with explanations of what that decision implies.

[Lee Braiden (lee-braiden)]

Oh, after being surprised by the strength of my dislike for this, I just realised one of the things that's making me hate it so much. The quit option is actually ignored. I right-click, choose quit, and it just sits there. Do it again, same lack of response.

I've also just noticed that it's possible to have multiple copies of the preferences dialog open, which SEEMS to be what prevents quitting. Presumably I could edit one of those dialogs, close it, and the other would still display the old contents, giving me a false sense of the current configuration (but again, I don't know what this configuration applies to).

Please disable this app by default, at least until it's more polished.

[James Westby (james-w)]

A fix has been committed upstream that should improve this. I aim
to get a snapshot in shortly.

Thanks,

James

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package bzr-gtk - 0.95.0+bzr629-1ubuntu1

---------------
bzr-gtk (0.95.0+bzr629-1ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Sync on Debian experimental.
  * Change DBus path for seahorse to match what we have in Jaunty.
    (LP: #332050)
  * Add missing import of gobject in bzr-notify to fix crashes.
  * This version makes the notification icon not be shown all the time.
    (LP: #283832)
  * FFe is in LP: #338013.

bzr-gtk (0.95.0+bzr629-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * New usptream snapshot.
  * Remove Chris Lamb from Uploaders, per his request.
  * Add Depends: python-notify as this is used by bzr-notify. Thanks
    Ralph Janke (LP: #281901)

bzr-gtk (0.95.0+bzr622-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * Add build dependency on python-nautilus.
  * Depend on newer version of python-nautilus, with changed API.
    (Closes: #501597)

bzr-gtk (0.95.0+bzr621-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * New upstream snapshot
  * Use olive-gtk.1 included with upstream.
  * Suggest bzr-loom, since there now is a loom frontend.

bzr-gtk (0.95.0+bzr611-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * Package new upstream snapshot.

 -- James Westby <email address hidden> Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:26:11 +0000