The plugin should allow Evolution to close to the indicator-applet

Thanks for your feedback. That's an interesting suggestion. I don't know if that should be the default behavior for applications using the message indicator. It's an idea that the Design may find worth exploring.

I confess I don't know which one is more adequate for being the default behavior, either (closing to tray or closing completely). But whatever the choice is, ALL applications should follow it. The inconsistency in the current behavior is very bad, usability-wise: people should remember that clicking on the close button will NOT close Empathy and Gwibber, but WILL close Evolution.

Furthermore, doesn't having to leave the app open defeats the purpose of a notification applet? It's bearable for me because I use Docky and can minimize Evolution to its launcher, which is on screen anyway. But people who use the regular Gnome taskbar, however, would be forced to keep Evolution exposed in it. (most people I ask about this says that the workaround is to leave Evolution in another workspace, hardly an optimal solution)

@David Barth :
Actually , mpt had added it in the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MessagingMenu#Unresolved%20issues , since it was mentioned. It just hasnt been worked upon.

Even if its not the default behavior it could be an option for the plugin.

After some days of using Karmic for the first time, I feel the need to assign this bug to the One Hundred Paper Cuts project.

1) The average user would encounters it in a default installation of Ubuntu, since both Evolution and indicator-applet are installed by default and evo is the default mail client.

2) It's a very annoying usability bug because it forces the user to have two different reactions to notifications, one of them being less efficient.

When using Gwibber/Empathy/Pidgin:
a) receive a notification
b) click on the indicator-applet to show the app window IN THE CURRENT WORKSPACE
c) reply
d) close the window
e) go back to work

When using Evolution:
a) receive a notification
b) click on the indicator-applet to GO TO THE WORKSPACE WHERE EVOLUTION IS
c) reply
d) GO BACK TO THE PREVIOUS WORKSPACE
e) go back to work

The difference I'm emphasizing in caps does not sound like a big deal just by describing it, from the experience of the last days I can say it's a major difference in workflow and a very blatant inconsistency.

3) The links given in the bug report and the small size of the source codes they point to suggest that a fix wouldn't be hard.

Small correction to my previous post. In the Evolution case there are two possibilities.

if it is in the current workspace already, clicking on the applet makes it receive focus and the difference in workflow is not that bad. It still exists, though, because this is forcing you to open evolution in the same workspace you are working (effectively killing the point why workspaces exist in the first place) and makes you either minimize or unfocus evolution after replying, which is inconsistent with Empathy/Pidgin/Gwibber where you can click on the close button to hide the window.

If it is not in the current workspace, it is even WORSE than what I previously described because it does not automatically changes workspaces as I incorrectly remembered: it merely makes the taskbar item calls for your attention and you have to change workspaces MANUALLY. I believe this almost kills the point of the applet since there's almost no benefit to clicking on it.

By the way, sorry about the caps if someone is annoyed by them. I wanted to use bold but the editor does not allow it.

Concious, I agree with your comments. I've also been taking a look a the source and it sheds a new light on things. Right now the applet calls up the evolution window with gtk_window_present which seems like the proper thing to do. The fact that gtk_window_present doesn't move the window to your desktop, or change desktops automatically _seems_ to be a deliberate choice on the part of the gnome developers.

The behavior you describe for empathy is actually connected to another issue for evolution (Bug #387833), which is running in the background without an open window. When you close empathy it runs in the background and then when you click on the indicator applet link it just brings up the window wherever you currently are. This is something the evolution devels have explicitly said they are not going to do. However, it may be possible to implement it through the plugin (I have working code which does that, but its terrible and uses fork() in blasphemous ways.)

To complicate matters, try leaving empathy open, moving to a desktop and clicking on the link in the indicator applet. The desktop switches to the one where empathy is still open. I actually have no idea how it does this, but this behavior should be possible.

Geoff, sorry for my ignorance, but could you explain in more details why exactly your current
code for hiding the windows needs to be hacky? Doesn't Gtk have some kind of "hide window"
function that can be connected to the close button? Or the problem is that this isn't possible
to do through the API exposed to the plugins?

The second link in the bug report (http://blog.sukimashita.com/?p=124) seems to need very
little code, but apparently it relies on a function that was deprecated.

I'm pretty new at this, so take everything with a grain of salt, but I think you got it in one. Hiding windows is easy. The problem is that the evolution plugin api doesn't have a hook for the close command. The only way I've been able to get it working is to spawn another window of evolution, hide that, and then that keeps evolution from closing.

I see, thanks for the answer. I guess the situation is quite complicated, then.
A clean solution will probably require patching Evolution directly and it is
well-known that close-to-tray is a feature that goes directly against upstream's
wishes, as it supposedbly violates the Gnome HIG.

Going against upstream's wishes is a bad move, and an unmaintanable
decision in the long term.

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. However, a paper cut should be a small usability issue , in the default Ubuntu 9.10 install , that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. So this bug can't be addressed as part of the project.

this is a feature request and a major one

For further info about papercuts criteria , pls read > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

Don't worry though, This bug has been marked as "invalid" ONLY in the papercuts project.

The dup seems to have a possible patch/hack/fix > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-indicator/+bug/387833/comments/29
Might be worth checking it out.

I wrote that hack and have been using it for the past few months. Its stable, and does the job, but needs to be implemented in a cleaner fashion. Right now when evolution starts up it minimizes the window and hides the task bar button. Then when the user clicks on evolution in the applet it uses fork to spawn a new window. When that window is closed, the hidden window is still open in the background, keeping evolution running.

Things that need to be done:
1. Fork is not the right way to do it. There should be some way to spawn a new evolution window using dbus or something like that. The way its done now leaves a zombie process, which doesn't do any harm bug is annoying.
2. There needs to be an option in the evolution plugin menu to turn this on and off. This would be easy enough for someone who understood the evolution plugin api.

I'd give this a much higher priority, as it really makes the evolution indicator broken under a certain scenario.

"Closing" evolution currently has the effect of silently and without warning breaking new-mail notification via a visually unrelated element in the messaging menu. A user can look at the messaging menu, confirm that message notification should work, then click a separate window, and break mail notifications. I don't believe it's clear at all that removing the mail reading UI from the screen removes the message notification behavior from behind-the-scenes. It's this sort of thing that I believe leads to a lot of frustration and confusion about the indicator applet's purpose in the Ubuntu desktop.

Is this targeted for Lucid?

Ok, so now that the beta for lucid is out I've taken a look at the new evolution-indicator code and try to get evolution to run in the background. The original author has added some dbus stuff, which I copied to significantly improve my original modifications. This new code uses g_spawn to create the necessary evolution windows and is much cleaner (no zombies).

Someone should probably use the evolution plugin api to add the option to turn this feature off (and I will if I get around to it). Besides that and some minor graphical weirdness the first time evolution is started (on slower machines you can actually see the first window minimize and disappear before the second starts up) this could be a reasonable workaround.

I've attached the diff between my evolution-indicator.c and the evolution-indicator.c included in evolution-indicator_0.2.7

Sigh. Made a mistake copying over my edits yesterday and consequently the previous diff is broken. Here's a better one. >_<

Geoff, someone in the Ubuntu Forums claimed to have compiled the plugin at

http://gnome.eu.org/evo/index.php/Evolution_Tray

in Ubuntu 9.10. Perhaps you could take a look at it? It doesn't seem to deal
directly with processes.

Concious, thanks for pointing that out. The "evolution_tray" plugin you pointed me to is an interesting workaround. It uses the same basic methods to hide/show the window whenever you click on a specially made tray icon. This is nice in that it is not trying to fool the evolution process, but on the other hand clicking on the close window button still shuts down evolution. You actually need to click on the applet icon itself to "hide" it. So the implementation is cleaner, but not as seamless. This could be made to work for the indicator applet in a similar fashion. You would still have the same problem of evolution having a different behavior than empathy and the rest of the indicator applet compatible programs, though.

While I'm typing words in here: an update. There is a new version of evolution in lucid and this diff is not compatible with that. It works with 0.2.7 and the current version is 0.2.8.

I see. Since the messaging menu in Lucid does *not* work for closing an open window, I guess this workaround wouldn't be enough for consistency regardless of user habits. The user is expected to use the close button for hiding the window.

I wonder how hard would be to patch Evolution in order to expose close behavior to plugins...

Just tried it out, and it only takes a couple of lines to add a new plugin hook to evolution. The only problem I foresee is that just because evolution emits an event doesn't mean the plugin can interrupt the shutdown process.

Hmm... then it would be necessary to patch the behavior in Evolution to shutdown *unless* a plugin asked to override it. And then there would be the problem of how to deal with the case in which more than one plugin wants to override it... I can see why this functionality was not exposed to plugins in the first place... :(

Actually its not so bad. Turns out there is a variable in the evolution shell object which you can set and it will tell evolution that its not ok to quit. This can be done from within the plugin. I've got a preliminary version working now and its about a clean a solution as you could hope for. Heres what happens.

1. When evolution gets a close window command it sends out an event
2. The plugin minimizes the window and hides and tells evolution that it is not prepared to quit.
3. When the user clicks on evolution in the indicator applet it presents the window (making it visible if necessary)
Aside: The only way to quit evolution is to use Ctrl-Q or the quit evolution command.

Its actually only 10-15 lines of new code, but its spread across 3 files and 2 packages so I'm not quite sure how to upload a patch.

Will probably have to release two separate patches, one for each package, unfortunately.

Well, I've implemented the modifications described in my previous post, as well as the option to turn the "hide evolution in applet" feature on and off, and it all seems to work. This new solution requires two patches though. The first is the new code for evolution-indicator package. The second is a minor patch to the evolution code itself which adds an "close window" event. I'll upload both of them here.

This solution is nicer, but also more complicated than my original hacky solution and it does sort of hinge on the evolution devs willingness to add a new event to the api.

This is the patch to the evolution_2.28.3 package to add a new close window event as described above.

After looking around I've discovered that all of the cool kids use ppa's to distribute patches. So I've set one up you can install the patches by:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:goehle/goehle-ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install evolution evolution-indicator

the ppa apparently dont work gives this when I try to update evolution (with
doing sudo apt-get upgrade evolution and related packages are kept back).

evolution: Depends: libenchant1c2a (>= 1.6) but 1.5.0-0ubuntu5 is to be
installed

Hmm. This is my first time doing this sort of thing, so I'm just guessing, but... are you running Lucid?

I just tried to install the updates in a cdboot of Lucid and it seemed to work.

Oh, sorry my mistake it seems the package now came in updates.

Ok for the patched evolution, I have one word super its working great.

Working great for me too, testing in Lucid.

The only issue I'm seeing is that the new "Contacts" option in the messaging menu launches another instance of Evolution. A think a better behavior would be to unhide the current instance and focus on the contacts view. But I'm not even sure the plugin API allows for things like focusing on specific views.

Concious: I noticed this as well. To my knowledge the plugin api doesn't allow you to focus an already open window. Taking a look at the original evolution-indicator code I see that the contacts menu item works by using g_spawn to call "evolution -c contacts" which will, necessarily, start a new window.

On a related topic, notice that if you click on the clock applet and then click the edit button next to your appointments drop down it spawns a new window, even if you have an evolution window open and visible. So at least there is some consistency! (Actually I find this behavior particularly irksome because the new window isn't even focused on the calendar, but thats for a different package on a different day).

Geoff, yeah, I think Evolution is simply not designed for using a single instance.

This limits a lot what can be improved in the indicator plugin in terms of usability. For example, right now there is one item for each account, but all items do essentially the same thing which is opening the Evolution window.

True enough. I also think that the plugin api was designed more for plugins which work within evolution. This is _way_ outside the scope of this bug, but a lot of these problems could be fixed by adding something like a dbus interface to evolution. Something that would allow other programs, like the indicator applet or the clock applet, to do basic things like open and close evolution windows, changing the focus of the evolution window, or selecting folders. While I'm daydreaming, you could even add basic functionality for reading/deleting/opening messages. That way you could replicate the functionality of the "CheckGmail" applet and delete messages from within the applet without even reading them.

Evolution recently received a truckload of code changes in preparation for Gnome 3.0 and all deprecations it will introduce (http://people.gnome.org/~fpeters/reports/299.html), which includes moving from Bonobo to D-Bus. Might be a start, but the whole thing is probably still in its infancy. 2.30 was not even included in Lucid.

Is there anything else I need to do on my end with regards to this bug?

In my opinion as a tester, no. As far as I'm concerned, you fixed it. :)

I hate to say it but after testing this package for a few weeks I'm afraid its not going to work as is. The problem is that because of my tomfoolery with the "dont quit" flag, evolution doesn't quit cleanly on logout. This is a problem because evolution might want to do a lot of important things like send outgoing messages or empty the trash before it quits. I'll keep thinking about it, but all of my solutions thus far are even more hacky than my origional "hidden window" method.

I figured out a way to reliably reset the quit flag. Now evolution will exit gracefully, whether there is an open window or not. I've updated the indicator package in my ppa, if you need the .changes.

There is a separate email notification evolution applet, but it looks like crap and requires additional setup...it would be a whole lot nicer to have it just open and shrink to the notification area with the chat/social networking applets

Hi Geoff - thank you! I hope your patch will be included in evolution-indicator.

I've just installed your patch and wanted to confirm what Julien Olivier wrote: When the Evolution window is visible it doesn't appear in the window list.

And there's also another problem: When you want to compose a new e-mail (or compose an answer to an e-mail) a new window opens - if you click on the close button of the main window now (to hide the main window while you're composing an e-mail) Evolution closes completely after you close the new e-mail (or after it closes because you clicked 'send').

Thanks for the feedback! I've updated the repository with some bug fixes. Evolution should reappear on the taskbar and in the pager after you restore it and you should be able to compose->close evolution->send without evolution quitting on you.

Show at startup works on one of my machines and doesn't work on another. When it doesn't work it pops up without the taskbar, which makes me thing that something other than my code is causing evolution to be displayed and might be hard to track down. So your mileage may vary with this option but it doesn't affect overall functionality.

An additional issue is that if evolution is hidden and you click "edit" in the clock applet then evolution appears without the taskbar. This is an issue with how gnome-panel is presenting the window and would have to be changed in that package.

Geoff, this is really excellent what you've done here! Can't thank you enough!

Thanks Geoff for the hard work!

However, I think I've just found a new bug with the updated version: if I open a message in a new window, then try to close it (using the close button in the title bar), evolution's main window that disappears instead of the message window (which remains opened).

If I use "file -> close" inside the message window, it works well though.

As for the problem with evolution starting with its mai, window visible on computer boot, I noticed that, when I check "launch evolution on start", it adds an entry in "startup applications" with the command "evolution %U". Shouldn't there be some special flag to prevent the window from being displayed (like "-h" for empathy)?

Julien: New bug fixed... You should be able to close message windows (and hopefully any other "extra" windows) normally now.

As for the special flag, if only it were that simple. The evolution devs are pretty adamant about not adding a "windowless" mode to evolution so there is no such flag. Right now I am capturing the first opened window and hiding it. Thats working fine but on some machines something else is causing it to reappear.

Geoff: I just tested it, and I confirm it's fixed. Thanks again!

Seriously, people, the bug spam is getting out of hand. I'm getting a gazillion Emails per day that have nothing to do with fixing this bug.

I would like to remind you that this is a bug filed against evolutions indicator applet, NOT Geoffs patch set that, despite working as well as it does, is obviously not considered an upstream nor an ayatana solution.

@Geoff
If you intend to maintain this I think you should open a projekt or at least a branch with your patches so that people can report bugs against it in a proper way.

@Marcus
Sorry to spam you even more with stupid questions, but what exactly makes Geoff an unacceptable solution to this bug? It fixes this bug, and no one else seems to provide any alternate solution...

Excellent solution! For me it's wonderful, it does what I expected from evolution-indicator.

Thank you, Geoff. Thank you one more time and have a nice day.

As suggested I created a project page for the patch code (https://launchpad.net/evolution-indicator-wmtaf). Bugs concerning the packages hosted on my ppa can be reported there.

On the other hand the patched code is intended to implement the close to tray functionality described in the bug report and created a separate project with conflicting packages is not an ideal solution in the long term.

Hey, got a couple of emails about this, so I thought I would update on the bug page. There actually haven't been any bugs reported on the project page and I haven't had or heard of any problems with the patched code. So I would say that the modified version of evolution-indicator is more or less stable. (I even managed to make it play nicely with the clock applet).

On the other hand, since ubuntu is moving to unity next iteration I don't think this patch will ever become a part of the official repository.

I'm lost here... I thought Unity used the indicator-applet. If this is indeed the case, how does the fact that Ubuntu uses Unity change anything wrt this bug?

Geoff, there was a uds session about the related topic so i think there are good chances for your patch.

Well, the patch doesn't play particularly nicely with unity right now. That could certainly be fixed. The bigger issue is that in unity when you "minimize" evolution it minimizes to the launcher icon. (Think Mac OSX.) So it makes this feature unnecessary and the whole "evolution running in the tray" thing has enough politics behind it that unnecessary probably means not implemented.

For me, what's really important is that Evolution is launched automatically on startup, like gwibber and empathy, and that "closing" it keeps it alive so that you can still get mail notification. I doubt Unity can do all that without a patched indicator-applet, but I could be wrong.

Geoff, you've done great work here! I really like the idea of squashing this bug and your enthusiasm for doing it. But I see two blockers to merging it as-is:

1) As Vish says though, we need to get some sort of buy-in from Neil or Matthew on the design side.

2) I don't actually see a patch or merge proposal here for review. I see your project's trunk, but not sure what the differences are from normal evolution-indicator. Can you branch evolution-indicator trunk and propose a merge back against trunk? That way, it can be reviewed by the maintainers.

I'm going to unsubscribe ubuntu-sponsors until blockers are cleared up.

I haven't heard of any problems with the patched code in a while now so I'm going to assume its stable and working as intended. I have created a branch in the evolution-indicator at https://code.launchpad.net/~goehle/evolution-indicator/MinimizeToApplet.

Geoff: well, there is still the problem with the mail window being display on session start. Or is it fixed now?

Fixed may be a bit of an overstatement... I ended up removing the option, at least in the code I am providing for this bugfix. I probably shouldn't have included it in this patch anyway since it doesn't address the bug as stated. If this ends up being accepted, and if there is interest in a "hide on startup" feature then I can submit a new patch for that separately.

Hi all,

I tried to have a look to Geoff's code (on post #96) but I always get a 'Page not found' error.

Is it normal?

May I find that code somewhere else?

I just would like to see if I can use it on a 'it works for me' basis, because I'm afraid the official change will take SOME time to appear... :-(

Yes, that page was removed. I submitted the code to the official evolution-indicator repository as a branch. You can find the link up top. However that just has source code and diffs. if you are looking for precompiled packages to download it from my ppa (instructions on post #75

@Geoff:
Thank you for your patience, Geoff!
I should have browsed a little more before "crying".. :-)

BTW: I recomplied on my own the plugin with your changes and it's working very well.
I must say that this is the behaviour I was expecting from evolution since the installation!
Thank you very much for your work!

@Geoff,

Even with Unity, Ubuntu will still have the Messaging Menu and I don't want Evolution cluttering the launcher all the time, just like I don't want it cluttering my Docky right now in Maverick. So I can assure you that I'll still use your patch in Natty, regardless of it being officially accepted or not.

As a side note, how difficult it was making your patch play nicely with the clock applet? I'm asking because Natty is dropping the applet and replacing with the Datetime Indicator, which also has support for Evolution appointments.

@Conscious User

Wow, Natty is just around the corner. I'll have to see if I can get my patch to work with unity. (Its a pain because unity doesn't work with virtualbox because of the 3d acceleration and I like to code on a virtual machine.)

What do you mean by play nicely? I haven't been using Natty so I am currently unaware of any problems the patch may have with that release.

Geoff, unity seems to work with virtualbox 4 it seems ;)

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:00 AM, Geoff Goehle <email address hidden>wrote:

> @Conscious User
>
> Wow, Natty is just around the corner. I'll have to see if I can get my
> patch to work with unity. (Its a pain because unity doesn't work with
> virtualbox because of the 3d acceleration and I like to code on a
> virtual machine.)
>
> What do you mean by play nicely? I haven't been using Natty so I am
> currently unaware of any problems the patch may have with that release.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/460483
>
> Title:
> The plugin should allow Evolution to close to the indicator-applet
>
> Status in Ayatana Ubuntu Love Project:
> New
> Status in Evolution Indicator:
> Triaged
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
> Invalid
> Status in “evolution-indicator” package in Ubuntu:
> Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> Among all applications currently integrated with the indicator-applet
> (Empathy/Pidgin, Evolution, Gwibber), Evolution is the only one
> without a close-to-tray functionality. This is inconsistent as it
> forces the user to leave it open in order to use the indicator-applet
> properly. Close-to-tray functionality has been implemented for
> Evolution before, so I guess it's possible:
>
> http://gnome.eu.org/evo/index.php/Evolution_Tray
> http://blog.sukimashita.com/?p=124
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-ubuntu/+bug/460483/+subscribe
>

Just thought I would put an update here since the new ubuntu is out.

Good News: Unity has been cleaned up to the point where my previous code now works as intended. Evolution runs in the background with no icon on the "sidebar". I was even able to get the "hide evolution on startup" feature working again.

Bad News: I can't publish my code because there are a variety of problems with the unmodified source, or at least with my method of working with it. I am accustomed to being able to do

sudo apt-get builddep evolution-indicator
apt-get source evolution-indicator
cd into source directory
./configure
sudo make install

And this process fails unless I make various configuration modifications. So if anyone has suggestions I'm listening, otherwise I'll putz around in the ./configure files until I get everything working...

@Geoff: I see the PPA has been updated and Evolution does close to the Messaging Menu but the Messaging Menu icon doesn't notify of new emails anymore.

I was just about to post that I figured out the autoconf weirdness and updated the ppa. An updated indicator applet should be available in the usual way:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:goehle/goehle-ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

As for the notification... thats a mystery. It still works for me, and I've been testing out the patch for the past several days. Are you using unity? I haven't done extensive testing in that environment.

Yes, I'm using Unity. And it looks like I'm not the only one: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/patched-evolution-indicator-which.html

Just an update:

I installed the patched indicator on three different machines and haven't had any trouble with the indicator functionality. I've also been in contact with Alin and he tells me that he can't get the indicator functionality to work with the unmodified applet. So I'm going to assume that the patched code isn't causing any problems that aren't already there, unless I hear more otherwise.

In other news, I should mention that evolution loads its plugins much later in the startup cycle. What this means practically is that if you want evolution to hide on startup it wont hide until the plugin is started, and that can take 5-10 seconds _after_ the evolution window becomes visible. Worse, if you close the window before the plugin starts it will shutdown evolution. However, I can't find a way to make the plugin start faster so I'm not sure that this can be fixed at the moment.

Hi All, does anyone now how to get it to work on Oneiric with Evolution 3.2? Should we still use Geoff's PPA or has it landed in the mainline?

Thanks.

Just a heads up, I've moved over to Gnome 3 so I won't be maintaining my PPA anymore. Hopefully the fix will come down from upstream soon...

Thanks Geoff, I really hope so but I don't have much faith in upstream (given that it hasn't landed upstream in 2 years)

I don't think it is going to be patched by upstream considering evolution is NOT the default mail client now. I hope somebody from community will create a patch & upload it to ppa.