Tray icon in KDE5 doesn't have colorful border

[marmarek]

In KDE5, tray icon (especially NetworkManger Applet) doesn't have colorful border. It looks like KDE is trying to blend the icon into panel.
It is critical to have a way to distinguish icons from VMs.

[marmarek]

Screenshot:

[marmarek]

One idea is to abandon borders and color the whole icon, similar to icons used in the menu. Algorithm used for this coloring requires converting RGB to HSL, which seems to be not an easy task in C, but much easier in python (as it's done with app icons). And it looks to be quite easy to call python function from C.

[marmarek]

After hours of debugging with @woju finally got it working :) IMHO looks nice, much better than unnoticeable border:

Transparency is introduced by KDE - this is probably the same mechanism that stripped the border...
Should we enable it by default for every WM? Or only KDE? @rootkovska

[rootkovska]

Can you disable it for KDE and paste here a screenshot?

[marmarek]

Take a look above - there is nm-applet icon from sys-net (yes, should have red border, but it's stripped by KDE).

[rootkovska]

No, I would like to see the icon with a white bg.

[marmarek]

There is no white bg in KDE5 - it strips it out. Yes, what is actually visible in the tray in KDE5 is something preprocessed by KDE, not directly mapped VM icon.

[marmarek]

And I can't see any configuration to disable this feature. Actually there is even no configuration for icon size (which is really annoying on HiDPI...)

[rootkovska]

What if our magic HSL-based color converter also converted any of the white pixels into... sightly less white pixels, say RGB(254,254,254)?

[rootkovska]

Currently it looks pretty ugly IMHO...

[marmarek]

RGB(254, 254, 254) trick worked:

[rootkovska]

... and if we also add back the frame in the VM color? :)

[rootkovska]

Also adding @bnvk to get his opinion.

[marmarek]

KDE strips the border, even if I made it thicker (2px).

[rootkovska]

I see... Ok, let's try this:

1. Revert back to the transparent bg,
2. Tone down the Saturation (the S in HSL) at least by 50% (S /=2)
   ?

[marmarek]

But when I made the frame separated 1px from actual border, it worked:

Now we've lost 2px from each side - one removed by KDE, the other one overwritten by our border.

[rootkovska]

Looks better though :)

[marmarek]

Transparent BG, reduced saturation:

[rootkovska]

Not bad either :) IMHO

[rootkovska]

And can you paste the screen with the nm-appet in a "connecting" state -- that looked worst on the screens above...

[marmarek]

No idea why, but when I've restarted nm-applet, KDE cut off another pixel or two from each side of the icon... Maybe something about icon size - now icon window (somewhere hidden by KDE) is 16x16, but embedded in 32x32 KDE container. After restarting gui daemon, icon is back at the right size (32x32), but is not updating anymore... Anyway probably unrelated to the whole coloring stuff.
Here is a screenshot you've requested:

And the one in disconnected state (the red one is in problematic state of 16x16 size):

[rootkovska]

I'm inclined towards the reduced-sat-on-transparent-bg version. Can you show how other icons would look this way? E.g. Electrum?

[marmarek]

Electrum in blue VM:

And red:

And the same with restored original saturation (and also added keepassx):

Still - I see Electrum being indistinguishable.

[rootkovska]

Not so good :/
And the version with "white-1" bg and frame around?

[marmarek]

Would you like reduced saturation too? IMHO this makes some icons harder to distinguish.

[marmarek]

Cutting 2px from each side is especially visible on keepassx.

[rootkovska]

palmface

@bnvk, help?

[marmarek]

I've already introduced configuration parameter for this. We can make it all configurable and decide on the final version later.

There is still an option for bordered but not colored icon (useful for other WMs).

[ParadiseBurn]

Might be just dumb newbie uestion here (ill be that idiot guy who cant read documentation) - Using 3.2 test iso, after launch I have no border or tray or anything outside of top left hidden icon for network config. Im sure theres a command to open the GUI, but what might that be? Im running everything through terminal now ( I know the version Im using is test/pre=release) just curious how I might activate to ease user expereince visually and for thos of us not as familiar with console.

[zander]

For what its worth;
the icon size is configurable and it is an "enum" to avoid HiDPI displays showing a 16 pixels icon.

The default is 16-pixels, scaled (looks just fine on a 230DPI screen I own, def not actually 16px).

You can change the default in a package quite trivially by patching (in dom0);
/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.private.systemtray/contents/config/main.xml
under iconSize change the default to 2, for instance.

About the border, the simplest solution is to work with the KDE team, or at least the sources. KDEs plasma is mostly implemented using javascript (in qml style) which means you have the sources in dom0. Many useful things can be done without recompiling.

For instance the actual icon behaviour etc is defined in;
/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.private.systemtray/contents/ui/items/StatusNotifierItem.qml

Either way, I'd be interested in reopening the investigation towards a coloured outline as the current solution of colourising is not my favourite, I got the impression you guys didn't prefer that either ;)

[zander]

Interesting observation;

Adding a border to my applications icon, and showing it in my kde5 desktop had the following effect;

a) when running the app in dom0. This shows the border just fine.

b) When running in an appVM, this shows the colored image, without border.

I conclude that KDE does not remove any border added by Qubes, I don't know the full pipeline from appVM to kde-systemtray, would it be possible that the issue lies in one of the other components?

[marmarek]

Icon handling is configured in /etc/qubes/guid.conf. Default is to color it, instead of adding border. Available options are in man qubes-guid, for reference:

   Available trayicon modes:
       bg:    color full icon background to the VM color

       border1:
              add 1px border at the icon edges

       border2:
              add 1px border 1px from the icon edges

       tint : tint icon to the VM color,

              can be used with additional modifiers (you can enable multiple of them)

       tint+border1,tint+border2:
              same as tint, but also add a border

       tint+saturation50:
              same as tint, but reduce icon saturation by 50%

       tint+whitehack:
              same as tint, but change white pixels (0xffffff) to almost-white (0xfefefe)

[andrewdavidwong]

This issue is being closed because:

• This issue has the "Release 3.2 updates" milestone.
• Qubes OS 3.2 recently reached end-of-life (EOL).
• This issue has not been updated in over a year.

If anyone believes that this issue should be reopened, please let us know in a comment here.

[ninavizz]

@marmarek I love that clipboard icon, in the screenshot towards the top. Why was it moved-away from?

[marmarek]

It was completely different thing - a built-in KDE widget (we use Xfce now) managing I think local clipboard only (in case of qubes: dom0, which doesn't really have any content).