One way to keep this under control would be to just add another method: Source.setSummaryItemTitle();

I've thought about splitting the Source title in two, one part for the title and the other part for random add-on status messages, but it seems this would wreak havoc on translators to have to try to phrase these messages with some simple, dumb string appending.

(In reply to comment #0)
> The SummaryItem label never updates its label to the current title. We
> currently inadvertently abuse this when adding the status and message to the
> notification title, retaining the summary item being the simple contact alias.

No, the notification title is not the same as the summary title. Presence notifications just update the notification so that its title is something other than the source.title. So there's no abuse going on here.

The only time we ever change source.title is if the contact's alias changes, and in that case, we do want the SummaryItem label to update. So we just need a 'title-changed' signal on Source, and watch that from SummaryItem.

Created attachment 189441 [details] [review]
messageTray: update the SummaryItem's label based on Source title changes

Comment on attachment 189441 [details] [review]
messageTray: update the SummaryItem's label based on Source title changes

>             source.connect('destroy', Lang.bind(this,
>                 function() {
>+
>                     delete this._sources[pid];

kill that blank line. good to commit after that

Attachment 189441 [details] pushed as 890efa7 - messageTray: update the SummaryItem's label based on Source title changes