GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 537912
Condition for displaying weather in the clock's tray icon is counter-intuitive
Last modified: 2020-11-06 20:22:23 UTC
gnome-panel's clock applet has a feature to display weather information in its tray icon for one location from the list of ones that you configure. However, it refuses to do this for any location whose timezone is different from the system's timezone. If all of the configured locations have a different timezone than the system, then the tray icon does not display the weather for *any* location. This is highly counter-intuitive because: (1) This requirement is not indicated anywhere in the UI. (2) No user would expect the ability to display weather information to be related to their computer's timezone. (3) The Clock Preferences window already has a check-box for "Show weather", suggesting that checking it is all that is needed (yet it does nothing if the timezone requirement is not met). As a result, if the system's timezone is not the same as the timezone of the user's home location then they will be unable to get the weather in the tray icon and they will have no idea why. This can happen in practice for a couple reasons: - Some cities have no entry in tzdata and instead use another city's entry, but the right one to use can be ambiguous (e.g., the correct timezone for Seattle, USA is America/Los Angeles, but when the user installs the OS and chooses the timezone they might instead choose America/Vancouver). - Some internationally-minded users choose to set the computer's timezone to UTC, regardless of where they live. To improve the usability of this feature, I recommend that the timezone condition be eliminated and that the clock's tray icon always display weather for the first location in the user's list. Controls should then be added to re-order the list in the Clock Preferences window. Other information: This was filed against Ubuntu Hardy at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/232375, but they did not agree that it was a bug.
Whilst in general I have to agree that this is a bug. I like to possibly propose a few changes that would help at least. - De-Sensitize the show weather/show temperature toggles when there are no locations set up, this way the user won't expect weather/temperature information displayed on the panel, it's quite easy to do this and I'll attach a quick patch. - There is a bug, that when you do Add a location which is not the Current one, and you have either show weather or show temperature enabled, clock applet does indeed attempt to add the weather icons, to the panel, however as no pixmaps have been generated for these icons because it's not the current users location blank space is added to the clock on the task bar. Another instance of this issue is when you Add a location that is the current location, and the weather icons are shown correctly, but you then add another non local location and remove the current one, the icons don't get updated and you end up with old pixmaps from the current location remaining on the panel. I'll have an attempt at coming up with a patch for this issue, and will also attach here, when/if I get it done :)
Created attachment 117996 [details] [review] De-sensitizing show weather/temperature toggles Patch for point 1, to de-sensitize the show weather/temperature toggles when there are no locations.
Created attachment 118006 [details] [review] Hide/Show weather obox This patch applies to point 2, where if a location exists but is not the current one, the clock weather widgets on the panel are not updated, e.g. hidden or shown.
Hi! I think this is still an issue (2.26.3). -System's location should be chosen as default location for which to display weather information if user is set more than one location in clock applet preferences. -If just one location is set, then that should be chosen. -There should be available mechanism for setting for which location weather information is displayed on the panel. I would rather not change my timezone settings each time I move between cities, more over so if they are in the same timezone. I could use weather applet if I wanted more comprehensive weather information, but I don't. Besides additional applet is crowding my panel. I prefer to see information about all locations when I click on the clock, but on the panel for the location I have chosen, which defaults to my timezone settings. Otherwise this is great applet. Cheers
This works fine for me in 2.28.
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