Re: Workrave in Ubuntu Precise (12.04) vs. the notification area (a.k.a. the system tray)

Rob Caelers <[email protected]> writes:

> Hi,
>
>> I'm trying to use Workrave on Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin).
>>
>> I managed to get the notification area to accept Workrave by opening
>> up its restrictions with this command:
>>
>>    gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"
>
> You may want to install Workrave 1.9.910 from my PPA:
>
> https://launchpad.net/~rob-caelers/+archive/workrave

Thanks for this info!

Is the link to this on the Workrave web pages?  I just looked through
them all yesterday and I don't remember seeing this.

(By the way, regarding the Workrave web site, I notice on the front
page that it refers to a feature comparison web page, but there is no
link and I can't find that page (even with Google “site:workrave.org
feature comparison”).)

> Or upgrade to 12.10 (which has 1.9.909 if I'm correct).

Unfortunately, there are various other reasons why it seems I should
stay on 12.04.  So I am more likely to use the PPA package.

> Both versions are prereleases of 1.10 (which is way overdue) and
> have a Unity indicator package.

Good news!

>> 1. The Workrave icon has now disappeared from the launcher.  The
>>     launcher is the bar on the left of the screen that replaces the old
>>     task bar that used to be at the bottom (by default).  Normally,
>>     every program which has at least one window, even a hidden or
>>     iconified window, has an entry on the launcher.
>
> I'm currently running Gnome Shell so I can't check. Will try Unity in a 
> Virtualbox soon (I need to check anways before release 1.10...)

I think the Workrave status window did not exist anymore.  And I guess
one of the points of notification area icons is to avoid requiring a
presence on the task bar (which the launcher replaces).  So this may
have technically been correct behavior of Unity 2D.

>> 2. At some point the Workrave window disappeared.  It had been on
>>     every desktop/workspace, but then it wasn't there anymore.  It
>>     isn't unusual for the Workrave window to inexplicably go away, so
>>     this might be unrelated.

I'm still not sure why the Workrave window disappeared (it happened
when I restarted the panel to make the notification area change take
effect), but now that I have right mouse clicks again (thanks to the
kind help of Dotan Cohen) I now know why it did not come back.  I had
disabled (via GConf) all 3 of the timers.  Under these circumstances,
turning on and off the “show status window” option in the preferences
has no effect.  But as soon as I enable at least one of the timers,
then the status window can appear.  Maybe Workrave is requesting a
window of zero height under these circumstances and the window system
is refusing?  I think it would be good if Workrave made a status
window that simply showed a message saying “all timers disabled, use
preferences to enable at least one timer”.

>> 3. There are now TWO Workrave icons in the notification area!  Neither
>>     of them reply to left clicks (and I haven't gotten the right click
>>     to work on my new computer yet, apparently I have to install a
>>     patched kernel or something like that).  I checked and there is
>>     still only one Workrave running (although it has 4 threads total).

I have now been able to investigate with the preferences, and it turns
out that one of the icons is enabled by the preference “show system
tray icon”, while the other one is enabled by the preference “applet
enabled”.  So the weirdness here is that the panel applet is looking
just like the system tray icon.  Maybe because it is appearing in the
notification area, it is being truncated to a size appropriate for a
notification icon and all that is showing is the sheep?  I am not sure
why this is, but I remember seeing another bug for another program
where something rectangular was being forced to fit in a square
space.  I think this was as part of the notification area in the Unity
panel.  So maybe this is the same problem?

> Weird... Please try a 1.10 prerelease to check if these problems
> have been solved. Thanks!

In summary, it seems I have encountered these problems during my
recent attempts to get Workrave running on a new computer:

1. It seems to be impossible to bring up the menu (and therefore
   access the preferences) by keyboard or left mouse click.  So
   because right clicks don't yet work for me (without an external
   mouse), it took me a lot longer to work out what was wrong.  I
   think it would be a good idea if the preferences could be accessed
   by keyboard.  And it would be good if left mouse click on the
   applet and system tray icon did something useful.

2. There seems to be no link to the PPA on the web site.  At least, if
   it is there, I could not find it easily.  This version would likely
   have solved my problems because I probably would have been able to
   use the new Unity indicator with left mouse clicks and I would not
   have needed the applet or system tray icon.

3. The Workrave status window does not show up at all (at least in
   Unity 2D) if no timers are enabled.  I was highly confused by this.

4. The “applet” gets displayed wrong in the Unity 2D panel (maybe in
   the Unity panel also?).  Only something the same size as the system
   tray icon appears.  Of course, it only shows up at all once the
   permissions are loosened to allow all applications to put things in
   the notification area.

Thanks for the help!

-- 
With my best wishes,

Joe

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