Network indicator hidden when there is no cellular signal

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

Not noticed this before so don't know if it's a regression.

I was away from network on the train and noticed that there was no network indicator on my phone. Just a blank space where it should be. However if I touch the indicator area, it appears, so it is there, but only appears when you touch.

I would expect the network indicator to always be there so I can tap it to choose a wireless network. See photos.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: unity8 7.84+14.04.20131212-0ubuntu1
Uname: Linux 3.4.0-3-mako armv7l
ApportVersion: 2.12.7-0ubuntu2
Architecture: armhf
Date: Thu Dec 19 10:54:01 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-12-19 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu Trusty Tahr (development branch) - armhf (20131219)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=linux
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity8
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

photo showing that the indicator is there

[kevin gunn (kgunn72)]

huh, don't suppose that's design teams attempt at saving real estate ?

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

That's because the "No signal" and "WiFi" icons actually come from the same indicator - indicator-network - and there's not enough space to show it, so the whole indicator is hidden.

We talked about this in OAK, but seem to have failed to follow up. There should be an icon instead of the "No signal" label, so they would both fit.

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

What *could* be fixed in unity8 is if we tried to hide only the left-most parts of an indicator instead of it whole. It'd be pretty tricky, and I'm not sure if really desired.

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

This isn't yet updated in the spec, so subscribing ubuntu-ux, too:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Networking#Phone:_Activity.2C_Cellular.2C_and_Network_indicators

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Reverting incorrect summary. It's possible that "No service" may change to an icon in future. But it may not, and other SIM statuses likely will not, because they're too uncommon for any icon to be recognizable. So the same problem could still occur, for example, when you had no SIM in the phone at all.

A more immediate cause of the actual problem here is that the indicators are in the wrong order. As shown in <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StatusBar>, location should be to the left of Bluetooth, which should be to the left of networking. With the correct order, location and perhaps Bluetooth would be hidden in this situation, but networking would be visible.

[Nick Dedekind (nick-dedekind)]

Bit of a toughy to fix the visibility issue; but for now, regarding the order this is what it is and should be:

Current order:
indicator-datetime
indicator-sound
indicator-power
indicator-messages
indicator-bluetooth
indicator-location
indicator-network

Desired Order:
indicator-datetime
indicator-sound
indicator-power
indicator-messages
indicator-network
indicator-bluetooth
indicator-location
indicator-rotation (doesn't exist yet)

[Nick Dedekind (nick-dedekind)]

Maybe in addition to position, we need a priority setting for each indicator, and visiblity is collapsed in order of lowest priority first. I would say that network indication has a higher priority than knowing phone volume.

Only problem here is that when you open the indicator, things will shift around to get back into order.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package indicator-location - 13.10.0+14.04.20140124-0ubuntu1

---------------
indicator-location (13.10.0+14.04.20140124-0ubuntu1) trusty; urgency=low

  [ Nick Dedekind ]
  * Fixed position as per design spec (lp#1262611)
    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StatusBar. (LP: #1262611)

  [ Ubuntu daily release ]
  * Automatic snapshot from revision 65
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:46:56 +0000

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

And what about switching to the Ubuntu Condensed font for indicators? That would lessen the overflow problems with text-based statuses...

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package indicator-network - 0.5.1+14.04.20140207-0ubuntu1

---------------
indicator-network (0.5.1+14.04.20140207-0ubuntu1) trusty; urgency=low

  [ Ted Gould ]
  * Adding acceptance tests and merge review policies.

  [ Nick Dedekind ]
  * Fixed position as per design spec (lp#1262611)
    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StatusBar. (LP: #1262611)

  [ CI bot ]
  * Adding acceptance tests and merge review policies
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Fri, 07 Feb 2014 16:30:13 +0000