Re: [Tails-dev] How to replace the green onion

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Author: intrigeri
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] How to replace the green onion
sajolida wrote (05 Mar 2015 17:03:04 GMT) :
> I hereby propose to have the list of circuits accessible directly from
> the green onion as it is the case now in Vidalia. But I'm not sure how
> this fits with your architectural plans and related
> security implications.


It should be no problem: assuming the green onion thingie is a GNOME
Shell extension (this seems to be the only reasonable way to do it
IMO), then it'll run as the `amnesia' users, who should be able to
start Tor Monitor anyway.

> Alan, I'm not sure what are the implications of the deprecation of
> System Tray Icons as I couldn't find anything about that in the GNOME
> HIG.


The HIG apparently doesn't capture everything that the code does.
Let me provide some background. In previous versions of GNOME, there
were two different things:

  * proper panel applets (e.g. NM's one)
  * icons in the notification area (that very often were things that
    should really be applets, but their authors were lazy and they
    hijacked the notification area -- that's what we did for our own
    OpenPGP applet, oops)


While with GNOME Shell:

  * the notification area isn't displayed by default anymore;
  * a third-party extension (topIcons) can be used to restore the old
    notification area icons placement; no idea how long this hack will
    work;
  * what used to be "proper panel applets" can now be implemented as
    GNOME Shell extensions.


> But in Tails Jessie we still have various custom widgets in the top
> bar that expend to more features when you act on them: the Florence
> keyboard and the OpenPGP Applet. So I guess this is still acceptable...


That's a temporary hack, made possible only via a third-party GNOME
Shell extension, and I'd like to get rid of as soon as possible
(https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/8309). Adding more stuff there
would add to the list of things that we'll have to
rewrite/replace later.

Cheers,
--
intrigeri