Proposal for a new internal panel-plugin : a "fake" handle

[Jasper Huijsmans]

Landry Breuil wrote:
...
> 
> Hacking on it, i don't really understand why expand and draw separator 
> are not exclusive... if i enable both, there is no separator drawn and 
> plugin is expanded.. 

That's a bug. The separator should be drawn centered.

> my panel is not full-width, and expanding a 

That's bug #2 ;-) An item should not expand in a non-full-width panel.

> separator makes my iconbox disappear (it's set to "use available 
> space"). If i unset this option for iconbox, expanding a separator does 
> nothing. Really weird behaviour, i'm confused :)

If the panel thinks the items don't fit, it will not display the some of 
them. This could be the same bug as above or a different one. It 
certainly is a bug.

> 
> If i understand, expand setting is here when you use full-width panel, 
> to force a plugin to be on the right of the panel .. but what is the 
> supposed behaviour with normal-width panels, where there is no extra 
> space ?
> 
> So, maybe a good idea would be to have only _one_ setting for separator 
> plugin, set to either "expand", "empty", "line", "fake handle", 
> "pre-4.4-style dots" with a combobox or radiobutton in the cfg dialog 
> ... that would simplify the code. 

That sounds reasonable.

> Or, even better, remove the "expand" 
> option, and make panel plugins freely droppable somewhere on the panel, 
> not "stacked" on the others (but that may require extensive hacking in 
> panel internals, dunno)

That would be a very fundamental change. It basically requires a rewrite 
of the XfceItemBar widget.

> 
> Ideas, comments ?
> In what direction do i start my hacking on separator.c ? :)

Just go with the one style setting option and I'll try to have a look at 
the bugs. Maybe you could file them on bugzilla, to make sure I don't 
forget?

Thanks,
	Jasper