why "dock to tray (icon)" functionality is missing in fltk? #1456

On 6/13/26 09:30, Ivan Baidakou wrote:

Hello! This is very convenient feature [dock to tray]

There are external projects for high level widgets.
Someone recently reported they liked this docking widget.

and I ask myself why it is still missing in fltk?

FLTK often doesn't track "high level widgets" to keep the library small, and the recommendation has been that high level widgets be managed as external projects that support FLTK.

That said, I think none of the devs have taken this specific widget on. Sometimes this is because the devs haven't had a need for it, or aren't sure about the best way to implement it.

First step would be for the devs to vote on if such a widget would make sense to add.

If that passes, I imagine we'd take submissions in the form of a pull request (PR) that does the job, follows FLTK development guidelines and is in the spirit of the API, has suitable docs, and is as tight as possible, and could then be merged in. Usually this involves a bit of back and forth by the developer and the FLTK devs to come to a consensus on a clean implementation that covers the basics, while also providing an API that allows app programmers to provide more advanced features via subclassing.

Someone recently reported they liked this docking widget.

Oh, this is Ian MacArthur's old site. He still frequents the FLTK mailing list.

According to this old thread, the project was moved to github by Mo_Al_.

As a first step, it probably needs a LICENSE so folks can actually use it legal-like, which I'd offer would need to be provided or at least assigned the FLTK LGPL by Ian on that thread to make it properly usable.

Apologies, but what is a "dock to tray (icon)" functionality? Like Fl_Window::iconize()? On macOS, the Dock is the collection of application shortcuts at the bottom. This seems to be similar to the system tray on Linux machines. Both are not so much in the domain of the GUI library IMHO. It's more a desktop thing.

I am sure I am missing some important aspect here. Could you explain?

The was no reply from the OP for quite a while and no further explanation. Closing this.

Both are not so much in the domain of the GUI library IMHO. It's more a desktop thing.

Yep, this is desktop things, and it is common expectation (of user) to have them (on modern programs), like having tooltips.