[Elementary-dev-community] Background apps discussion

[Nishant George Agrwal]

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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Re: [Elementary-dev-community] Editing GTK UIs live

[Daniel Foré]

Omg parasite works with gtk3 now. I'm so happy I could die T_T

Best Regards,
Daniel Foré

El mar 22, 2013, a las 3:20 a.m., "Sergey \"Shnatsel\" Davidoff" 
 escribió:

> Hey guys,
> 
> Continuing the list of awesome GTK tools is a tool that allows fiddling with 
> live GTK2 and GTK3 UIs. It's called GtkParasite and has been around for quite 
> a while, but was ported to GTK3 only recently.
> 
> For designers it means that you can push the pixels in the real app in real 
> time until you're satisfied and then just show the values to a dev. No more 
> recompiling things over and over to change one margin value over and over. 
> Edit away!
> 
> For developers... I'd better quote the official website:
> 
>> Developing and debugging UIs can be a pain. When something goes wrong, it's 
>> not always obvious why. You can waste hours writing logging statements only 
>> to find out that a widget is in the wrong container, or an attribute wasn't 
>> set correctly.
>> 
>> Developing isn't much better either. Ever spend time writing temporary code 
>> just to test a new feature, code you know you're going to throw away in an 
>> hour, and yet you end up spending the next 20 minutes debugging your 
>> temporary code? Sucks, doesn't it?
>> 
>> What your program really needs is a good Parasite infestation.
> 
> Here's a good introductory screencast that explains the Parasite workflow: 
> http://chipx86.github.com/gtkparasite/video/parasite-intro.avi
> 
> Binary packages for Ubuntu can be obtained from 
> https://launchpad.net/~phurley/+archive/gtkparasite 
> The PPA currently provides packages only for Quantal. I've contacted the 
> author and asked to copy the packages to Precise series. In the meanwhile, 
> Quantal packages work just fine when manually installed on Precise/Luna.
> 
> Happy hacking!
> -- 
> Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
> OS architect @ elementary
> -- 
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~elementary-dev-community
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Re: [Elementary-dev-community] Editing GTK UIs live

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff]

Then you probably haven't properly installed it.

I recommend using ATK for programmatically extracting strings. It's also
compatible with Qt (given you have the required package installed, which
Ubuntu ships by default and elementary OS should pull in on installing Qt)
and possibly with other toolkits and doesn't require loading custom GTK
modules.

Before you ask, GtkParasite is probably not a great idea for unit testing
either since it's a primarily interactive tool. Canonical maintains a
custom solution for unit testing on GTK and Qt apps, with the GTK one being
slightly less maintained. It is in turn based on per-package unit testing
infrastructure inherited from Debian and expanded by Ubuntu. Hit up on
Martin Pitt's Ubuntu Developer Week talk on quality assurance for details.

2013/3/22 dkotrada 

> vrcmr@t61:~$ GTK_MODULES=gtkparasite gedit
> Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "gtkparasite"
>
>
>
> 2013/3/22 dkotrada 
>
>> I've installed. How can I start it?
>>
>>
>> 2013/3/22 dkotrada 
>>
>>> @Shnatsel could this be used for lookup translation? Where the string
>>> exactly located?
>>>
>>>
>>> 2013/3/22 Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff 
>>>
 Hey guys,

 Continuing the list of awesome GTK tools is a tool that allows fiddling
 with live GTK2 and GTK3 UIs. It's called GtkParasite and has been around
 for quite a while, but was ported to GTK3 only recently.

 For designers it means that you can push the pixels in the real app in
 real time until you're satisfied and then just show the values to a dev. No
 more recompiling things over and over to change one margin value over and
 over. Edit away!

 For developers... I'd better quote the official 
 website
 :

 Developing and debugging UIs can be a pain. When something goes wrong,
> it's not always obvious why. You can waste hours writing logging 
> statements
> only to find out that a widget is in the wrong container, or an attribute
> wasn't set correctly.
>
> Developing isn't much better either. Ever spend time writing temporary
> code just to test a new feature, code you know you're going to throw away
> in an hour, and yet you end up spending the next 20 minutes debugging your
> temporary code? Sucks, doesn't it?
>
> What your program really needs is a good Parasite infestation.
>

 Here's a good introductory screencast that explains the Parasite
 workflow:
 http://chipx86.github.com/gtkparasite/video/parasite-intro.avi

 Binary packages for Ubuntu can be obtained from
 https://launchpad.net/~phurley/+archive/gtkparasite
 The PPA currently provides packages only for Quantal. I've contacted
 the author and asked to copy the packages to Precise series. In the
 meanwhile, Quantal packages work just fine when manually installed on
 Precise/Luna.

 Happy hacking!
 --
 Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
 OS architect @ elementary

 --
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 Post to : elementary-dev-community@lists.launchpad.net
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>>>
>>
>


-- 
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
OS architect @ elementary
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[Elementary-dev-community] Editing GTK UIs live

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff]

Hey guys,

Continuing the list of awesome GTK tools is a tool that allows fiddling
with live GTK2 and GTK3 UIs. It's called GtkParasite and has been around
for quite a while, but was ported to GTK3 only recently.

For designers it means that you can push the pixels in the real app in real
time until you're satisfied and then just show the values to a dev. No more
recompiling things over and over to change one margin value over and over.
Edit away!

For developers... I'd better quote the official
website
:

Developing and debugging UIs can be a pain. When something goes wrong, it's
> not always obvious why. You can waste hours writing logging statements only
> to find out that a widget is in the wrong container, or an attribute wasn't
> set correctly.
>
> Developing isn't much better either. Ever spend time writing temporary
> code just to test a new feature, code you know you're going to throw away
> in an hour, and yet you end up spending the next 20 minutes debugging your
> temporary code? Sucks, doesn't it?
>
> What your program really needs is a good Parasite infestation.
>

Here's a good introductory screencast that explains the Parasite workflow:
http://chipx86.github.com/gtkparasite/video/parasite-intro.avi

Binary packages for Ubuntu can be obtained from
https://launchpad.net/~phurley/+archive/gtkparasite
The PPA currently provides packages only for Quantal. I've contacted the
author and asked to copy the packages to Precise series. In the meanwhile,
Quantal packages work just fine when manually installed on Precise/Luna.

Happy hacking!
-- 
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
OS architect @ elementary
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