Expand option in tasklist (xfce4-panel, svn)

Brian J. Tarricone bjt23 at cornell.edu
Thu Jan 12 21:03:32 CET 2006


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On 1/12/2006 11:52 AM, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> Brian J. Tarricone schreef:
>>
>>On 1/11/2006 11:09 AM, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
>>
>>>Pau Rul·lan Ferragut schreef:
>>>
>>>
>>>>	hi people!
>>>>
>>>>Today I realized there is an option in the properties of the "Task List"
>>>>item (in svn trunk xfce4-panel). I wondered that it meant the bar would
>>>>expand so all the task in the window fit there. But I press the button and
>>>>nothing changes. 
>>>>
>>>>I am missing something?
>>>>Should I debug it in some way?
>>>>
>>>>I did not wanted to fill a bug because perhaps is just my stupidness.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Hmm. Like stefan said, the option makes the taskbar take all available 
>>>space, but only if the panel is in full width mode.
>>>
>>>At least this indicates a problem with the wording. Maybe someone has a 
>>>suggestion? At least I could add a tooltip 'Expand when panel is using 
>>>the full width of the screen' or something.
>>
>>Or just "Expand to fill panel".  Which it will always do if the panel
>>isn't full-width, but oh well.
>>
>>Actually, look at this from the other side: is there any reason why you
>>*wouldn't* want the taskbar to fill available panel space?  Here are
>>some scenarios:
>>
>>1.  Panel is *not* full width.  Taskbar will behave the same regardless
>>of the taskbar's "expand" setting.
>>
>>2.  Panel *is* full-width.  Taskbar is *is* full-width.  Taskbar fills
>>available panel space.  This makes sense.
>>
>>3.  Panel *is* full-width.  Taskbar is *not* full-width.  There's a
>>bunch of blank panel space.
>>
>>What's the point of #3?  How is #3 any more desirable than #2?  Just
>>remove it: taskbar behaves as if "expand" in the taskbar's settings is
>>always checked, and just remove the pref.  Yes, a few people will
>>complain, but I'd bet a crisp new twenty[0] they're the vast minority.
> 
> This used to be the case (it's what I thought, exactly). It's a very 
> recent addition, at the request of someone who was using xinerama and 
> the panel would span across all screens, but he wanted to be able to 
> restrict the size of the tasklist.
> 
> But now someone else complained about the spanning of desktops -- which 
> I added because of a bug report complaining that it didn't... -- and now 
> I don't know what the best solution would be.

Ok, then let's look at the xinerama use case.  We have two camps: people
who want the taskbar extended across the top of the entire big screen,
and people who want the taskbar just across the single monitor.

Now, for people who don't have more than one screen (I'd figure the
majority), the cases I described in my previous mail probably hold true.

How evil is it to special-case xinerama?  A plugin can easily determine
if we have xinerama active by doing
gdk_screen_get_n_monitors(gtk_widget_get_screen(plugin));
Perhaps if that returns > 1, show the option, otherwise don't?  In this
case, we can actually say what it does in the option title: "Expand
(panel|tasklist) across all monitors".

	-brian

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