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Maniphest T8138

Full Systray support
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Description

It seems to me that Enlightenment does not have full systray support, and it would be useful if it were a fully functional environment.

  1. Certainly do not work applications like Kopete or Gajim. Kopete works on Qt5 and Gajim on GTK3 libraries, so they don't use Xembed on 99% and should be supported.
  2. Support for Xembed can be obtained by using xembedsniproxy, which is part of the KDE package (but works independently). Unfortunately, while the project itself probably works well on Enlightenment (some applications like Wine can work without systray and display their own, but if they detect one on Xembed they display it there), it does not display in Systray.
  3. We could use some support for the Notifications Area. I don't know what it means, but how do I understand some of the applications can be displayed there? I don't know.

I think if Enlightenment 23 / 24 had it working, it would have been a brilliant environment (properly configured)

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fervi created this task.Aug 15 2019, 3:45 PM
Thanatermesis added a subscriber: Thanatermesis.EditedSep 29 2019, 4:57 PM

I'm just testing a recent build and I can confirm that systray doesn't works (it doesn't shows anything), not nm-applet or dropbox for example

Notes:

  • the systray feature in E16 works just fine! and it already uses xembed aparently
  • xembed was removed in the past on commit 5bd1587078237cc6f26c33b5e87232d7a522d7bb (maybe we can recover it to re-implement?)
Thanatermesis assigned this task to raster.Feb 19 2022, 3:00 PM
Thanatermesis removed a project: Restricted Project.
Thanatermesis added subscribers: triantares, TheTechRobo.

Long time passed since the last update of this issue, I want to comment here because Enlightenment is lacking full systray support with most application and this small issue is also one of the biggest for mass adoption, users cannot have a fully functional desktop without a systray that some applications requires for its full functionality.

So I have tried E25 in debian/bullseye and noticed that the systray doesn't accepts almost any application, for example, nothing is shown in:

  • xpad (notes in systray, critical need)
  • nm-applet (wifi / network gadget, critical need)
  • blueman-applet (bluetoth gadget, critical need)
  • many others that I didn't even tried...

If you run "safeeyes" we can see it in the E's systray

In the case of nm-applet I can see in the source code that is meant to work with libappindicator since long time, the last time I tried it was in debian/buster but now the issue stills here in bullseye, so I don't understand why it doesn't works

As I said, this small feature is a biggest problem in E for being a completely featured desktop today's, since many applications could not work from it

raster added a comment.Feb 21 2022, 3:21 AM

i can only comment about nm-applet but you have to specifically enable appindicator support at compile time... otherwise it wont' support it. people are using it successfully with this enabled. i assume all the rest above are the same - they do xmbed only.

Thanatermesis added a comment.Feb 21 2022, 9:12 AM

Mmmh that's strange, debian packages includes it by default but now I just tried compiling it myself on its last version and making sure ayatana-appindicator is compiled with, and there's no way to make nm-applet appear in the systray

Then I tried with LXDE, XFCE, and Cinnamon, and it shows up with all of them

raster added a comment.Feb 22 2022, 4:54 AM

well ask on #e - i believe simotek and others have used nm-applet with this and it has worked. they had to compile with this enabled though.

Thanatermesis added a comment.Feb 24 2022, 11:31 AM

answered, thanks simotek

Seems like nm-applet only needed the --indicator argument in order to show up as ayatana mode (no idea why is not detected / set by default)

So the question that remains is about the other apps that uses xembed-only, I know xembed is uglier but could be a good thing to have it working as fallback for compatibility to support other apps, or maybe to enable it from the systray conf

raster added a comment.Feb 24 2022, 12:20 PM

not going to add xmbed at all. it has far too many gotchas/problems. doesn't port to wayland. doesn't allow multiple instances. totally screws up look of icons (squares). most xmebd apps do not handle xmbed "tray provider" disappearing and re-appearing (ie when e restarts) etc. ... so my guess is these apps don't do indicator protocol like you had they issue with nm-applet and they need to move on or just not work.