Okay, so the thread about Noise not complying to the HIG turned into
quite a general discussion about the HIG and background application
behaviour so I am creating this new thread with a better title to
continue it. Here's a link to the old thread:
https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev-community/msg02046.html
Summing up, we need to think about proper ways to create and deal with
background applications, i.e, applications that don't require
interaction with the user for most or a big part of the time they are
running, like mail clients, IM clients, music players, microblogging
apps, etc. Typically, these apps don't fit well into any one task the
user is performing, so it often doesn't make sense for these
applications to be bound to a particular workspace either.
To this end, applications are to intelligently handle closing the
window to do whatever best suits the situation. The following could be
guidelines to what the app must do (this deals with the user-facing
elements, not the implementation)
"If you'd check a specific application frequently but not in reaction
to notifications it raises (e.g. group chat, even if you weren't pinged
directly) or if it has to be accessible as quickly as possible while
it's running (e.g. music player, to pause music), the app should
display an icon in the dock while it's running.
If the app is primarily brought up in reaction to a notification and if
the state of the app doesn't significantly affect its usage frequency
(e.g. microblogging client - if the user tweets often they'd pin it to
dock anyway), it should display an icon in the dock only when there are
unattended action items (e.g. new messages) along with the action item
count in the dock badge."
As far as implementation goes, this branch was recently merged into
plank, which enables preliminary support for batches and progress bars
without the need for an open window.
https://code.launchpad.net/~ricotz/plank/launcherentry-items
For hiding the window while keeping the dock icon visible, one solution
would be to make better use of minimize. The following blueprint would
need to be implemented:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/gala/+spec/minimized-as-closed
That's all folks.
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