Comment 6 for bug 852521

Okay, some thoughts:

Making slingshot an indicator: this is not necessary. Also, by doing so we'd need to deal with the obscure (and constantly evolving) Indicator library and all that stuff. Also, I'm not sure about having the whole thing as an indicator or if it'd nicely support all the stuff already implemented in Slingshot using popovers (Yes, I've had bad experiences with packing stuff inside MenuItems before) .

In my opinion, the easiest fix is implementing "Applications" as a GtkMenuItem, pack it in wingpanel and keep it always in sync with slingshot's "visible" property. We would need to have slingshot export that property over DBus and have wingpanel listen to it. I can do that if you agree.

The wingpanel-side solution is 90% finished: https://code.launchpad.net/~victored/wingpanel/applications-menuitem

I'd only need to implement the DBus service on slingshot, modify wingpanel to be a client of the service, and that's it.