Plasma 5 support

[filipesaraiva]

Hello, first thanks for this great Thunderbird addon.

Plasma 5, the new version of KDE's Plasma Desktop, drop-out the xembed based system tray. There are some alternatives to fix it, you can read in http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/06/where-are-my-systray-icons/

So, do you provide support to Plasma 5?

Thank you!

[stonemaster]

+1 I think this is an important one.

[foudfou]

I've started experimenting on libappindicator.
The adaptation is not straightforward. I think we loose some events not available with appindicator:

• click on icon (activate)
• middle click

I'll try to work on it as it seems to help both KDE and Unity users (Unity not tested yet).

[stonemaster]

Yes I agree that isn't trivial. Unfortunately it there is no real way around it because more and more users upgrade to Plasma 5 and Ubuntu made Unity its standard desktop. On the other hand libappindicator also supports legacy systrays so you'll just need one code path to support all Linux desktops.

[foudfou]

I prefer not to make libappindicator a requirements for all WM/DE flavors as it's needed only for Unity and KDE.
Besides, appindicators provide less functionality than standard system tray icons, and we don't want to limit user experience.

Anyway here are preliminary thoughts on what appindicator support implies:

• Add menuitem Show/Hide
• Add option for middle-click: Show/Hide or Activate Last
• Disable new message count option (TB)
• Disable chat icon (TB)

Comments and other suggestions welcome.

Please note I won't be able to work much on this in the short term.
But I'll be happy to mentor anyone willing to work on this. Patches also welcome.

[foudfou]

Ok guys. I gave it a try: see branch appind (389e6ce).

I should generally work well. Some things are not working the way it should though:

• scroll on the icon doesn't work under KDE (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=340978), but in Unity yes
• left click on the icon doesn't open the menu under KDE, but in Unity yes

Other than that, due to the very limiting nature of AppIndicators:

• the message count in TB can't be displayed (https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/812067)
• tooltips are displayed in the menu instead of as "balloon" tooltips (https://bugs.launchpad.net/indicator-application/+bug/527458)

I now would encourage you to build and test this version, and see if it suites your needs.

[stonemaster]

Thanks for your hard work so far! I've compiled the branch and am now running the new version of the plugin. So far everything is looking good. As a first implementation I'm totally satisfied with the current state because it's much better than my previous solution: none.
Hopefully appindicator will get better support for other actions and events to be able to re-implement the missing pieces of the original behavior.

[Rush]

Guys I am fresh to FireTray and I am a user of plasma5, how do I get started to get it working on the forementioned branch?

[foudfou]

I wanted to have v0.5.3 out before merging the appind branch. I'll that soon.

[Rabotyahoff]

How to hide icon in system tray? Because I use unity and Thunderbird integrated with indicator-messages. I don't like many items in tray.

[foudfou]

@Rabotyahoff is your request related to #150 ? If so could you explain your needs precisely on #150 ?

[xylo]

I wonder that this discussion is only about KDE 5. I'm using KDE 4.13.3 and Thunderbird 31.3.0 with FireTray 0.5.4 and discovered the same problems:

• tray icon does not show the number of unread messages anymore
• left click on tray icon does not work anymore
• scroll up / down on tray icon does also not work

Some weeks ago everything worked fine but something major has changed and broke the entire add-on.

[xylo]

OK, I found another bug report that addresses only the feature regression in version 0.5.4: #151

[foudfou]

Ok. I'll close this one, as support for Plasma 5 is covered, although not perfect.
I think the with_appindicator preference deserves UI but that's another issue.
Also the appindicator doesn't provide as much functionality as with EWMH icons (#143).

[eliadevito]

I suggest the use of http://jjacky.com/statusnotifier/ instead of libappindicator

[Rush]

@ScorpionIT does it have right click support? The Ubuntu focused solutions usually only support left-click. My library supports right click event https://github.com/encharm/libsystemtray and is super simple, doesn't require even GLib.

[eliadevito]

it support left,right,middle click and scroll

[eliadevito]

@Rush I had a look at your library and it is very nice.
I have compiled it but when i launch the test binary I don't see the icon in the tray

[gshegosh]

For what it's worth, Skype somehow does the tray icon with left and right click working, I have no idea how. They also show number of unread messages on the icon. Missing tray icon left click support for Thunderbird and Pidgin is a pain :-( Not having constant distraction of unread count in the tray -- this I consider a feature ;-)

I've tried looking at source codes, but KDE development is not my pair of shoes :-(

[ohhai]

Skype requires sni-qt package for that in KDE 5. For GTK apps installing libappindicator may help.

[Rush]

@ScorpionIT it is fixed, have you given it a second shot?

[kF13Ld]

As I am also running plasma 5 (as well as probably a lot of more people, i.e. at least everyone using Kubuntu 15.04), would you guys mind publishing a new version of FireTray?

[foudfou]

@kF13Ld I'm willing to do this shortly. We must also take the time for review process into account...
Meanwhile, you may want to build for yourself.

[kF13Ld]

@foudfou: Ok, compiling indeed worked, but what was not mentioned in your how to was to change the line 11 in the file src/logging.jsm from
const FIRETRAY_LOG_LEVEL = "All"; // "All" for debugging
to
const FIRETRAY_LOG_LEVEL = "Warn"; // "All" for debugging.
Otherwise it would not compile (forgot error message).

After installing the plugin, you can see the result here:

The icon does not show, but it is there. I.e. I can right click on it to get the context menu, and middle click to open the thunderbird window.

Also, for new messages, a letter symbol correctly appears. But for some reasons, the normal thunderbird icon is invisible. I have already tried setting a custom icon, with no help.

[foudfou]

@kF13Ld , I can confirm this new issue (missing icons for plasma 5). Tested on Fedora22.
I'm created a new issue #199. Please follow up there.

[juanluisbaptiste]

Is there a released version that includes this fix ? currently I'm testing firetray 0.6.0.1-let-fixed on kubuntu 15.10 and the system tray icon still doesn't appear.

[juanluisbaptiste]

Building git version works, but left click to show/hide the window doesn't work, I have to use right click -> show/hide menu option.