irukado

Aaron Seigo posted an entry on the dot about systrays applets vs. applications

Trying to be constructive about this... perhaps the issue isn't about system trays at all, but that people want to separate two different kinds of apps:

• the apps they keep running, are fully familiar with, and consider part of their desktop "experience". What used to be called (possibly resident) "tools", "utilities", "accessories" or "commodities" rather than apps.
• the heavyweight apps they use during a particular session, to actually perform a task, and want to unload as soon as possible once done.

It seems to me that the whole application vs. utility distinction has been lost or even deliberately thrown out lately -- perhaps because it seems difficult for new users to distinguish between the two. In this, I think we've headed South when we should have gone North.

Thinking of it this distinction lets me see a few new conceptual links. For example, Mac OS X has a nice system where apps stay loaded after you close a document (which makes much more sense to me), and the panel icon has a little marker arrow to show that the app is still loaded. So apps don't need windows, or even a taskbar tab -- just a single, tidy, well-known icon for that app. This helps with space, consistency, and also actual management of documents, programs, resident tools vs. heavyweight apps etc., all in one simple conceptual change.

Another --- very welcome --- advantage of this is that it gets rid of that stupid thing where apps have a file->quit menu, even when they don't use files as their main unit of work. It should probably be something like application->quit, and better yet, (icon)->quit. Obviously interacting with a graphical, object-oriented representation of an application is a nicer, more visual (and therefore more visualisable) system.

So, I think this is essentially what people are trying to accomplish with their use of the systray on platforms like Windows and (to a lesser extent) Unix. It's very noticeable that the two concepts are essentially merged (but yet distinct in actual use due to natural workflow) in the OS X panel.

In plasma, working with this kind of distinction, it might make sense to separate these apps vs. utils into different containments. Maybe that's even what people are trying to accomplish when they look to "desklets"**.

In summary, this "what's appropriate in the systray" debate has been raging for a long time, especially in GNOME. Rather than fighting over this, or simply accepting that people can have it whatever way they want, I think it would behoove everyone to sit down and ask where the conceptual differences are, and how we can make a desktop that clarifies those concepts.