Bug 241923

1. is "fixed" (reverted) in xchat-2.8.2-7-fc[78].
2. is a new feature provided by upstream, some people love it, others hate it, 
but that's why it's an option.

(In reply to comment #1)
> 2. is a new feature provided by upstream, some people love it, others hate it, 
> but that's why it's an option.

It's the maintainer's job to integrate things well with Fedora.  If something is
useless to Fedora users then it shouldn't be there.  What exactly is the purpose
of the notification area icon?

Also, it's important to note that we also should be striving for good design. 
Putting icons that don't do anything is not good design.  We should in general
not be adding new icons to the notification area without a good reason to do so.

The purpose is notifying the user of incoming messages when he/she is looking 
at other windows than X-Chat. This is common for IM clients, so why is it so 
bad for IRC that we need to override the upstream default for this?

Now, I don't like notification area pollution either, and in fact I have this 
feature turned off myself, so I'm not principally opposed to flipping the 
default with a (hopefully one-line) patch. However, I think end users will 
wonder why Fedora's X-Chat "does not have" the feature upstream X-Chat 
advertises so loudly if it's disabled by default.

Created attachment 155991 [details]
Patch to disable the tray icon by default

This trivial one-character patch should be enough to change the default.

The real question is: are you SURE you want me to do this? :-)

Oh, and let's make sure Remi is aware of this discussion too.

What about libwnck?  Isn't that sufficient for notifying the user?

If that's what shows those "passive popups", that's actually a (non-default) 
option too ("Show tray balloon on: [ ] Channel message [ ] Private message [ ] 
Highlighted message") and can be set independently of the tray icon, however 
I'd argue that said form of notification is much more invasive than the small 
tray icon.

No, libwnck is what makes the taskbar item blink.

Oh, yes, that feature is enabled by default, if you think that's sufficient as 
the default, I'll apply the posted patch to disable the tray icon by default.

What the tray icon allows, though, is hiding the window and taskbar entry, 
actually taking up less space than the taskbar entry, and still getting 
notifications. But I don't know whether that's something a user (of the kind 
who doesn't go through all the configuration options at first startup 
anyway ;-) ) would be likely to want to do.

I agree with your assertion about the default setup, and yeah I do think it's
sufficient for most people.  People that want the icon can still enable it by
going through the prefs.

And something that might be worth pushing upstream is that the icon shouldn't be
present when xchat and the taskbar item is shown.  No need for two notifications.

The problem with that idea is that the interface to hide the main window goes 
through the tray icon.

Sounds more like a problem in the design/implementation, not the idea :-)

Currently building 2.8.2-8.fc[78] with this patch.

2.6.2-8 built for Rawhide and F7 candidate updates, submitted for F7 
updates-testing in Bodhi.

This now addresses the second point too (the first one was already addressed in 
2.6.2-7), so I'm closing this again.

xchat-2.8.2-8.fc7 has been pushed to the Fedora 7 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

Some notes: The packages without the patch (2.8.2-x, x<=7) were never pushed to 
F7 updates, only updates-testing, and I had them pulled.

If you already had 2.8.x (<=2.8.2-7) installed from testing or Rawhide and ran 
it at least once, the icon won't automatically disappear with the update, 
you'll have to turn it off in the preferences if you don't want it. But new 
installations and upgrades fom 2.6.x (which is what's still in F7) default to 
not showing the icon.

xchat-2.8.2-8.fc7 has been pushed to the Fedora 7 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

actually regarding the tray notification in my eyes it makes perfect sense
because it behaves exactly like e.g. gaim does.

why is it less meaningful than the gaim message notification? personally i do
like the feature and i dont feel like having the tray polluted by this.

xchat-gnome e.g. has a notification turned on by default aswell. why is xchat
special here and has to have this feature turned off?

Well, we can't please everyone. :-)

FYI, I don't care either way, I just implemented what the primary maintainer 
wanted me to, so I'll let Christopher Aillon and Matthias Clasen continue this 
discussion with you if they're willing to discuss this. If the consensus is to 
enable it by default after all, it's easy to change it back.