Ayatana System Indicator — DateTime

About Ayatana Indicators

The Ayatana Indicators project is the continuation of Application Indicators and System Indicators, two technologies developed by Canonical Ltd. for the Unity7 desktop.

Application Indicators are a GTK implementation of the StatusNotifierItem Specification (SNI) that was originally submitted to freedesktop.org by KDE.

System Indicators are an extensions to the Application Indicators idea. System Indicators allow for far more widgets to be displayed in the indicator's menu.

The Ayatana Indicators project is the new upstream for application indicators, system indicators and associated projects with a focus on making Ayatana Indicators a desktop agnostic technology.

On GNU/Linux, Ayatana Indicators are currently available for desktop envinronments like MATE (used by default in Ubuntu MATE), XFCE (used by default in Xubuntu, LXDE, and the Budgie Desktop).

The Lomiri Operating Environment (UI of the Ubuntu Touch OS, formerly known as Unity8) uses Ayatana Indicators for rendering its notification area and the UBports project is a core contributor to the Ayatana Indicators project.

For further info, please visit: https://ayatana-indicators.org

When using the -datetime Ayatana Indicator, make sure that the -datetime Ubuntu Indicator (package name: indicator-datetime) is not installed.

The Datetime Ayatana System Indicator

Actions

• desktop.open-settings-app
  phone.open-settings-app

  • Description: open the settings application.
  • State: None
  • Parameter: None

• desktop.open-alarm-app
  phone.open-alarm-app

  • Description: open the application for creating new alarms.
  • State: None
  • Parameter: None

• desktop.open-calendar-app
  phone.open-calendar-app

  • State: None
  • Parameter: int64, a time_t hinting which day/time to show in the planner, or 0 for the current day

• desktop.open-appointment
  phone.open-appointment

  • Description: opens an appointment editor to the specified appointment.
  • State: None
  • Parameter: string, an opaque uid to specify which appointment to use. This uid comes from the menuitems' target values.

• set-location

  • Description: Set the current location. This will try to set the current
  • timezone to the new location's timezone.
  • State: None
  • Parameter: a timezone id string followed by a space and location name.
  • Example: America/Chicago Oklahoma City

• calendar

  • Description: set which month/day should be given focus in the indicator's calendar. The planner will look for appointments from this day to the end of the same month. Client code implementing the calendar view should call this when the user clicks on a new day, month, or year.
  • State: a dictionary containing these key value/pairs:
    • appointment-days: an array of day-of-month ints. Used by the calendar menuitem to mark appointment days.
    • calendar-day: int64, a time_t. Used by the calendar menuitem to know which year/month should be visible and which day should have the cursor.
    • show-week-numbers: if true, show week numbers in the calendar.
  • Parameter: int64, a time_t specifying which year/month should be visible and which day should have the cursor.

Custom Menuitems

• Calendar

  • x-ayatana-type s "org.ayatana.indicator.calendar"

• Alarm

  • label s short summary of the appointment
  • x-ayatana-type s "org.ayatana.indicator.alarm"
  • x-ayatana-time x the date of the appointment
  • x-ayatana-time-format s strftime format string

• Appointment

  • label s short summary of the appointment
  • x-ayatana-type s "org.ayatana.indicator.appointment"
  • x-ayatana-color s color of the appt's type, to give a visual cue
  • x-ayatana-time x the date of the appointment
  • x-ayatana-time-format s strftime format string

• Location

  • label s the location's name, eg "Oklahoma City"
  • x-ayatana-type s "org.ayatana.indicator.location"
  • x-ayatana-timezone s timezone that the location is in
  • x-ayatana-time-format s strftime format string

Code

Model

The app's model is represented by the "State" class, and "Menu" objects are the corresponding views. "State" is a simple container for various properties, and menus connect to those properties' changed() signals to know when the view needs to be refreshed.

As one can see in main.c, the app's very simple flow is to instantiate a state and its properties, build menus that correspond to the state, and export the menus on DBus.

Because State is a simple aggregate of its components (such as a "Clock" or "Planner" object to get the current time and upcoming appointments, respectively), one can plug in live components for production and mock components for unit tests. The entire backend can be mix-and-matched by adding the desired test-or-production components.

Start with:
include/datetime/state.h
include/datetime/clock.h
include/datetime/locations.h
include/datetime/planner.h
include/datetime/settings.h
include/datetime/timezones.h

Implementations:
include/datetime/settings-live.h
include/datetime/locations-settings.h
include/datetime/planner-eds.h
include/datetime/timezones-live.h

View

Menu is a mostly-opaque class to wrap GMenu code. Its subclasses contain the per-profile logic of which sections/menuitems to show and which to hide. Menus are instantiated via the MenuFactory, which takes a state and profile.

Actions is a mostly-opaque class to wrap our GActionGroup. Its subclasses contain the code that actually executed when an action is triggered (ie, LiveActions for production and MockActions for testing).

Exporter exports the Actions and Menus onto the DBus, and also emits a signal if/when the busname is lost so ayatana-indicator-datetime-service knows when to exit.

include/datetime/menu.h
include/datetime/actions.h
include/datetime/exporter.h

License and Copyright

See COPYING and AUTHORS file in this project.

Building and Testing

For instructions on building and running built-in tests, see the INSTALL.md file.