Here are some release notes for the next round of lxpanel checkins. These are
ready to go as soon
as we agree on a release plan.
Normally this might go in on a branch, but I consider it in code freeze rather
than still in development. It is stable to the extent I can test it. I have
been running most of it for over a week. I know it might impact some users who
are used to building from SVN but I think I would suggest checking it in on
trunk and having an intensive effort to test and stabilize and then put out a
beta tarball. As we already know, the highest risk is a segfault that causes
the panel to restart. Your feedback on the best way to get this done is
welcomed.
Icon grid layout manager
A new layout manager for the Keyboard LED, Launchbar, Pager, and System Tray
plugins adapts to the size of the panel and repacks icons to use space most
efficiently.
New handling of "stretch"
Now only the Space and Taskbar plugins will honor "stretch" or offer it in the
configuration dialog. For the Taskbar plugin, it is defaulted on to avoid
having a new user encounter the behavior that the taskbar grows beyond its
allocation.
Honoring font color
Font color is now honored in every plugin. Font color changes immediately in
all plugins as it should.
Desktop Number plugin
Shows desktop names if available from window manager.
Launchbar plugin
Changed the handling of an empty launchbar. I was troubled by how it initially
configured pcmanfm and firefox, which may not be installed and we would display
the broken image icon. Now the plugin puts up an "Add" button when the
launchbar is empty that takes the user to the configuration dialog.
The launchbar configuration dialog now populates a list of available
applications from the menu cache. It is no longer possible to add an
application to the launchbar unless it is in the menu. However, users no
longer have to search the file system for the desktop file if it is not in the
particular directory that the plugin displayed in previous releases.
The launchbar configuration dialog now displays the application icons.
Menu
Non-square icons now work.
Fixed the handling when a menu plugin was created so that the broken image icon
is not displayed.
Pager
Each desktop now has a tooltip with the desktop name as reported by the window
manager.
Removed the hardcoded limitation of 20 desktops.
It is still a known issue that some Compiz features are unsupported. This is
the next item to be worked on.
Taskbar
Removed the confusing options Accept SkipPager, Show Iconified, Show Mapped.
Added an option to combine multiple windows from the same application into one
button ("Grouping").
This should alleviate most issues with taskbar overcrowding.
Significant internal reworking of the implementation.
Tray
Implemented so-called "balloon messages", small amounts of text that a tray
application can display.
Significant internal reworking of the implementation.
Window Command
Removed the "toggle" behavior. Now the plugin unconditionally iconifies or
shades all windows on a left or middle click.
Plugin development notes
Vertical panels are now assumed to be fairly wide, and text is always drawn
upright. I personally run with a vertical panel 150 pixels autohide.
The plugin versioning proposal is implemented. External plugins will not load
unless PLUGINCLASS_VERSIONING is called in the PluginClass initializer (and
matches the version of the panel).
Several plugins were found to call the destructor in the error path of the
constructor. This is wrong and will cause a segfault later when the plugin
manager calls it again.
Plugins should not consider an unrecognized parameter a fatal error. This
reduces the possibility that a user can fall back to an earlier release if
trouble is encountered on an upgrade.
The "orientation" callback is used whenever any style change is made that might
require a full redraw, such as an orientation change or a text color change.
The plugin should do a full redraw.
Plugins should not destroy p->pwid in the destructor. This is done in the
plugin manager.
All text drawing should flow through the central routine
panel_draw_label_{text,integer}. This centralizes the handling of font color.
All right-click handling should flow through the central routine
plugin_button_press_event. Plugins should declare this as the
button-press-event handler if they do not have any other handling of button
press.
Plugins need to be careful to constrain the height of their top level widget,
so they work properly in wide vertical panels.
Test with both horizontal and vertical panels. Test with all background
options. Test that your plugin works properly when it is removed from the
panel. Run the panel from a terminal and make sure your plugin does not
generate GTK assertions or X errors.
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