[Goodies-dev] How to write panel plugins?

[Serge Stroobandt]

Dear Lucas,
Dear Group,

I find myself in a very similar situation as yours; I am also a GNOME 
refugee running Linux Mint XFCE Debian edition and willing to contribute 
a places-related panel application written in Python. I recently posted 
about it here but I was not so lucky to receive any replies.

Here is what I found out so far:
XFCE is indeed programmed in C with GTK+. There are a couple of C 
libraries/APIs to help developers with the kind of integration you are 
looking for.
An initiative for creating a similar set of Python bindings 
http://pyxfce.xfce.org/ appears to have suffered a silent dead without 
any release.
This is a real pity because it shunts out the growing number of 
potential Python-only panel app contributers out there. (Like the both 
of us ;-)
I also found the following recent forum thread to be very instructive:
http://old.nabble.com/Are-there-python-hooks-and-or-APIs-for-creating-apps-for-xfce4--td33054067.html

In the mean time, I have realised that my trivial but handy "Recent 
Folders" app can perfectly live on its own on github since it also 
serves other GTK+ desktops.
Feel free to check it out here: https://github.com/on4aa/recentfolders
I am planning to soon also publish a Debian package of it. This will 
solve some of the menu integration issues.

With kind regards,
Serge

On 19/08/12 18:37, Lucas Sichardt wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I'm a newbie in this but I would really like to write one or another 
> panel plugin for Xfce. As I've switched from Gnome 2 to Xfce on my 
> main machine I now have discovered Xfce much more and I really like 
> it. In fact I think it's better than even Gnome 2 - but missing some 
> useful plugins perhaps.
>
> Unfortunately I do not know how to write my own plugins. For a 
> beginning it would just be a starter for a specific application 
> (though this can be done with the regular starter plugin as well). 
> Later I'll perhaps try to rebuild Gnome's popular 
> Applications-Places-System menu. I've done that by copying and editing 
> the menu file and it works fine so far. But it really lacks the 
> possibility of editing the menu by a GUI.
>
> That much concerning my intentions.
> Perhaps one of you can help me getting started with writing panel 
> plugins. What I need to know at first is which language to take. I'm 
> used to Python but I guess the odds are bad that Xfce's panel plugins 
> are written in Python ;) So which language is used?
> Perhaps one can provide a link to a good tutorial or an _easy_ example 
> plugin to study - my internet research did not help me here...
>
> Thanks for your attention.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lucas
>
>
> -- 
> Lucas Sichardt | Lucas.Sichardt at posteo.de | http://Lucas.Sichardt.net 
> <http://lucas.sichardt.net><http://lucas.sichardt.net/index.php?Seite=Aktuell>
> gesendet mit O <http://www.opera.com>pera 12 unter 
> <http://www.linuxmint.com>Linux Mint 13 Maya Xfce
>
>
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