Blend with panel: xfce4-dockbarx-plugin doesn't show up on the panel

[hotice]

Hello,

I'm the maintainer of the DockBarX PPA and I wanted to update xfce4-dockbarx-plugin to the latest version but I can't because it doesn't work in my tests. On both Xubuntu 14.04 (.3 - fresh install) and Linux Mint 17.1, when using "Blend with panel", the applet doesn't show up on the panel. It didn't work with "solid color" either but I've applied your latest commit as a patch and that mode works now.

Any idea how to debug it?

[TiZ-HugLife]

Can you exit xfce4-panel completely and then run it in a terminal and post the log here?

[hotice]

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/xfce4/panel/plugins/xfce4-dockbarx-plug", line 276, in <module>
    cairo_pattern = pattern_from_dbus(xfconf, prop, offset, orient)
  File "/usr/share/xfce4/panel/plugins/xfce4-dockbarx-plug", line 79, in pattern_from_dbus
    color = iface.GetProperty("xfce4-panel", prop + "background-color")
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 145, in __call__
    **keywords)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 651, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.xfce.Xfconf.Error.PropertyNotFound: Property "/panels/panel-0/background-color" does not exist on channel "xfce4-panel"

[TiZ-HugLife]

It will fail if your panel is not panel-0. Maybe it's panel-1 or panel-2? Can you check in your xfconf editor? I know it's not particularly graceful to make the user specify the panel number. If there was a way to detect which panel dbx is on, I'd use it, but I haven't figured it out yet.

[hotice]

It is not that. I only have one panel in Xubuntu 14.04 so I couldn't have failed. Besides, I tried all numbers between 0 and 4 anyway on both Ubuntu and LM just to make sure. There's no "background-color" in the Xfce Settings Editor for xfce4-panel btw. Just "background-alpha" and "background-style".

[TiZ-HugLife]

So then, are you using the none style, that just uses the system style? You've never used the solid color style on your panel?

[hotice]

Yup, that's it. Not only do I need to change to "solid color", but I also have to pick a different color. Then it works.

[hotice]

Maybe a solution would be to display a warning in such cases and not allow selecting "blend with panel" (or hide that option)?

[TiZ-HugLife]

It's in the readme that you need to do this, but a friendlier option would indeed be better. The plugin has no means of detecting the background configuration aside from dbus. If I could just grab the GTK color somehow, that would be best. If I can figure out a way to do that, I'll do it.

I'll mark this as a pre-release since the edges have become rougher. :/

[TiZ-HugLife]

I have actually just thought of a way to autodetect which panel to blend with, so I'll add an issue for looking into that.

[TiZ-HugLife]

Okay, so we can autodetect which panel to blend with as of 9cf211838f3da9ef6e331fe182131d9b9d919354, and now as of f43cde89f78e11a4c673bdf3a1cea1935b40dd27, we can also blend with the system style. In order to test it, I set the panel to use system style, deleted my background-color xfconf property, and it was working. You should test it out for yourself. If it works, we can release! :3

[TiZ-HugLife]

I'm feeling confident so if I don't get a reply very soon, I'd like to go ahead and release. I have a branch with a migration to xfconf that I'd like to merge. Eventually, that will become 0.5.

[TiZ-HugLife]

No response, so I'm closing and releasing. Please re-open if this is still broken.

[hotice]

Yes, this seems fixed for me as well. Sorry for my late reply!

[TiZ-HugLife]

No worries, I'm just glad it worked out! :)