[wx-dev] wxTaskBarIcon \ wxMAC

[Stefan Csomor]

Hi

Sorry, a resend of one of the messages that didn't make it to the list apparently ...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin Ollivier [mailto:kevino at theolliviers.com]
> Sent: Sonntag, 17. Juni 2007 18:39
> To: wx-dev at lists.wxwidgets.org
> Subject: Re: [wx-dev] wxTaskBarIcon \ wxMAC
>
> Hi David,
>
> On Jun 17, 2007, at 8:57 AM, David Scott wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> > Are there any plans to make wxTaskBarIcon place an icon in the
> > status\menu bar icon area on OS X?
> >
> > On Windows, the icons behave as expected and show up in the system
> > tray area. This is very useful for apps that don't have an
> > interface up all the time.  But on the OS X they don't appear to be
> > any different than a standard application with a normal menu and an
> > icon in the Dock.  I would like to create an app that just has an
> > icon in the OSX status menu area but this doesn't seem to support
> > that.
>
> There were plans to support both modes, but looking in CVS it doesn't
> look like it was implemented yet.
>
> Still, many Mac programs (such as iTunes, XCode, and Adium) basically
> use their Dock icon as a "taskbar icon" too. Note that you can close
> the iTunes or XCode GUI Windows, but still use the Dock icon to
> manipulate the app (e.g. play/pause, creating new project) by right-
> clicking or clicking and holding on the Dock icon. Another nice
> benefit is that the Dock scales as the number of icons grows, so you
> don't have the problem you have with status menus of them being
> hidden because the menu bar is running out of space to show menus and
> the status menu icons.

exactly, it was always discouraged by apple because you are consuming very precious space that cannot be reclaimed,  and for applications on small screens the menu bar really can become a tight place. But as Cocoa has an official API to get there - where in Carbon I hadn't, I wouldn't rule out that completely, please make a feature request on sf.net and assign it to me, I guess we would need some kind of switch - once again - to indicate which behavior you'd want, the one in the dock or the one in the status part of the menu bar (ie the right part)

Best,

Stefan

PS : as an update : I'm slowly going down the path of moving more and more parts that are not present in a CoreXXX library over from Carbon to Cocoa APIs and currently I'm working on wxMenu and friends, as soon as I have something to test I'll commit and I'd be happy if people could turn on the wxMAC_USE_COCOA switch to test cursor and menu handling.