LXDE Forums

Does anyone know how to add the TurboPrint applet after installation to LXPanel?

A brief amount of research indicates that it has a gnome-panel applet. There will never be a way to add gnome-panel applets to LXDE panels.

Marty Jack wrote:A brief amount of research indicates that it has a gnome-panel applet. There will never be a way to add gnome-panel applets to LXDE panels.

Thanks. It runs with KDE, so the problem with it working with LXDE is...?

From the looks of it they also have a KDE panel applet.

If you want all the comforts of GNOME or KDE, you should run GNOME or KDE. LXDE is not intended to be a copy of GNOME or KDE. It is smaller, lighter, faster. If it meets your needs, great. If not, not.

I have no intention of doing work to implement support for, and more importantly maintain indefinitely, another desktop's private communication mechanism between their panel and their panel applets that they may decide to change at any moment. It being open source, anyone else is welcome to do whatever they like.

Marty Jack wrote:From the looks of it they also have a KDE panel applet.

If you want all the comforts of GNOME or KDE, you should run GNOME or KDE. LXDE is not intended to be a copy of GNOME or KDE. It is smaller, lighter, faster. If it meets your needs, great. If not, not.

I have no intention of doing work to implement support for, and more importantly maintain indefinitely, another desktop's private communication mechanism between their panel and their panel applets that they may decide to change at any moment. It being open source, anyone else is welcome to do whatever they like.

NetworkManager Applet seems to be GNOME based, and it runs in the LXPanel.

NetworkManager aka "nm-applet" is running in the system tray, this is usable for all applications. A plugin for a panel is only for this panel and need to be rewritten for another panel. You can't compare these two applications!

maces

maces wrote:NetworkManager aka "nm-applet" is running in the system tray, this is usable for all applications. A plugin for a panel is only for this panel and need to be rewritten for another panel. You can't compare these two applications!

maces

Cheers. So would it be an idea to push the company behind TurboPrint to include an applet for LXDE? How difficult would it be for them to write an LXPanel applet?

There is a vast difference between an application that provides a system tray status icon, such as Pidgin or the HP print toolbox, and a program that plugs into gnome-panel or the KDE panel; even though it may not appear there is any difference from looking at the presentation. The communication mechanism for system tray icons is a thoroughly frozen Freedesktop standard that all desktops and the major toolkits (GTK, Qt, others) implement. The communication mechanism between a panel and its applets is a private specification by that desktop system.

It would be better to push TurboPrint to provide a management application with a system tray icon. Then they wouldn't have to implement this over and over. It may be that they already have one and all you have to do is start it. This will become critically important if I should decide to replace my aging HP with a Pixma when it breaks.

I am considering withdrawing what support we do have for writing external panel plugins in a future release, and having all such things be implemented with tray icons. No decision on this is made. One major advantage is they would be out-of-process and not able to crash the entire panel.

Hi Marty,

TurboPrint comes with two management applications, both of which show up under the "preferences" section of the LXDE application menu. It is possible to add them using the application launch bar settings dialog. So in reality, what you are suggesting already exists.

Cheers