KTrayer: Kicker modification to save space.

1/2. Idea

Thought up a piece for desktops.
For maniacs like me who are fighting for every pixel.
Generally. The standard application bar, it’s also a taskbar, it’s a kicker — it’s evil because it takes up space on the screen. Moreover, most of this place is undeserved.
There are still dockers a la makos, but they also take up space, which is insulting.
In general, the concept is designed for intransigence in the fight for desktop cleansing, and also assumes that the user spends most of his time working with maximized applications, i.e. deployed in full screen.
The concept looks like this:


The idea is that on the screen, when even the application is maximized, there is always a non-working area - this is the right half of the window title bar, roughly between its middle and the window control buttons (minimize-close-close).
Here you can stick something that will be shown on top of the window, without any damage to health. (On the left half of this band, as a rule, there is a window title, plus approximately in the center, I double-click when I want to maximize the window, etc.).
I propose to insert a narrow one there — the width of the window title itself — the lane on which the clock, tray, and icons of open windows would be placed, the same size as the tray icon, without titles (that is, as in Mac OS) and actually behaved This strip is exactly like a docker - i.e. with fisheye effect, bouncing over highlight windows, etc.
In my opinion, it would be very convenient.

Why not just turn on auto-hide panel? Because I always need a watch in my field of view, several tray icons, for example, the current language and the Gaim icon, plus the applications do not make good sense - this information is also needed and relevant right away, and not during the next check “didn’t something appear” ?

2/2. Implementation

I expressed this idea in LiveJournal and on a pair of IRC channels. On FreeNode, # kde suggested how this can be achieved with existing tools. Here is an easily achievable result:

')
Steps that reproduce the result in the current KDE:

I. Panel setting.
1. In the panel configuration (“Configure - KDE Panel” / Arrangement), select:
- size - tiny;
- lenth - 1%;
- check “Expand as required to fit contents”
- position - top-center.
2. In “Configure - KDE Panel” / Hiding, select “Allow other windows to cover the panel”.
3. [You can also optionally tune the panel background in Appeareance configure appeareance. I have selected “enable background image” in the screenshot with the default panel background from SUSE 10.2 and “Colorize to match the desktop color scheme” is highlighted].

Ii. KDE configuration.
In “KControl”, also called “Configure Desktop”, go to Desktop - Window-specific settings, select “new” ...
1. Click on “Detect”, point to the kicker panel.
2. Go to Preferences, select “keep above” - “force” checked.

... and it turns out that it turns out :)