Ubuntu Wiki

• Launchpad Entry: dx-karmic-messaging-menu

• Packages affected: indicator-messages

Summary

The MessagingMenu was added to the panel in the Jaunty release cycle. It has gotten a whole heap of reviews and community comments which have resulted in many ideas for its evolution. This spec is to track that evolution in Karmic.

Release Note

• Messaging menu updated with new applications and the ability to show and activate applications that are not currently running.

Implementation

Issues in v1

• Used 'Get' to find indicators (auth.log errors)
  • Fixed in trunk to use DBus introspection -- slower, but more 'correct'
• API too narrow -- required apps to 'lie' to MI in order to get an effect
  • See below
• Code quality, no real test suite.
  • Partially fixed in trunk
  • dbus-test-runner
• E-mail and instant message are treated as the same priority
• Application support limited need:
  • Thunderbird
  • xchat-gnome
• Evolution plug-in issues:
  • Can't go right to the messages that are interesting
  • Perhaps go to unread messages in the inbox if you select the inbox
• No C# bindings for C# applications
• No information on when the item appeared on the menu. For example: I just got a notification, where is it? Results in an increased search time.

v2 properties

• New props:

  • label -- Text shown in the menu item. Typically this should be the person sending the message or the mailbox. May contain a count.

  • icon -- The icon shown in the menu item. Typically this should be the user icon of the person sending the message.

  • time -- The time that is associated with this time. This should be the most recent message or the time the IM was sent. If a time is not provided, the time will be assumed to be the time the indicator was sent.

  • display_time -- Controls whether or not the time is displayed in the right hand column of the menu.

  • draw_attention -- This item should signal the user that it has been placed in the menu. Currently this is "show the green dot."

  • count -- Number of entries of a particular topic. Should be an integer that by default is zero and not shown. Only non-zero counts are shown.

• No more than 7 items should be shown for any application.
  • Should it be dynamic? Perhaps there are differing constraints that make sense
  • Does this lead to a fuzzy spec?
• Migration would include using the "subtype" to migrate the old properties to the new properties.

v2 Features

• Visibility of applications not running
  • Allow applications to put desktop file in somewhere (/etc/indicators/messaging ?)
  • Desktop files would provide "On" and "Off" strings (e.g. "Start monitoring Instant Messages" to "Show Buddy List")
  • Provides a more central place for messaging
• Clean up the APIs and make it so there are less "magic numbers" -- important for other folks looking at

v2 Issues

• Launching Applications:
  • Every application thinks they're important, which ones should we include?
  • Users should be able to block
  • Does this include an unwieldy preference dialog that isn't truly useful for most users?
  • How do users control the entries in the menu?
• No other issues, everyone thinks everything is perfect.

Test/Demo Plan

• Future work

Unresolved issues

• How applications should specify they appear in the Messaging Menu
• How this should be integrated with the packaging

CategorySpec