If someone created an application that used application indicators, which are famously supported across multiple Linux desktops, would it benefit them on Windows or Mac OS?
3 Answers
Potentially, yes. They use DBus as a transport mechanism and this is available for Windows, for instance. So you'd write a Windows notification icon that rendered itself based on the DBus data and the indicator would appear as a normal Windows notification icon. The same is true for OS X.
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ok, so the indicator code itself couldn't be reused (they'd have to create notification icon code specific to Windows/OS X) - but the DBus code would be reused - thanks! Oct 12, 2011 at 12:30
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Right, so once you had an indicator-service for Windows, then any app would work. Shouldn't be to difficult to make one either. Oct 12, 2011 at 12:35
The application indicator falls back to using a GtkStatusIcon that will work on other OSes. You won't get as nice of menu integration, like what you have on Ubuntu, but it should work. Now, all that comes with the warning that I don't have a copy of Windows to test it.
I wrote my own Python replacement for appindicator
when I was developing StackApplet. It runs on any platform with PyGTK installed (including Windows).