Showing urgent (flashing) windows on all desktop in LXDE's taskbar (window list) in Lubuntu

September 25, 2014 [C, Lubuntu, Programming, Tech]

As it stands, lxpanel's taskbar plugin (part of the LXDE desktop you get with Lubuntu) does not show urgent (flashing) windows if they are on a different virtual desktop from the one you are looking at.

This seems wrong to me (I logged Bug 682), and the fix is a little one-liner:

--- lxpanel.orig/src/plugins/taskbar.c  2013-08-27 23:57:55.000000000 +0100
+++ lxpanel/src/plugins/taskbar.c       2014-09-26 00:48:25.026855589 +0100
@@ -202,10 +202,10 @@
     tk->flash_timeout = g_timeout_add(interval, (GSourceFunc) flash_window_timeout, tk);
 }

-/* Determine if a task is visible considering only its desktop placement. */
+/* Determine if a task is visible considering only its desktop placement and urgency. */
 static gboolean task_is_visible_on_current_desktop(TaskbarPlugin * tb, Task * tk)
 {
-    return ((tk->desktop == ALL_WORKSPACES) || (tk->desktop == tb->current_desktop) || (tb->show_all_desks));
+    return ((tk->desktop == ALL_WORKSPACES) || (tk->desktop == tb->current_desktop) || (tb->show_all_desks) || tk->urgency);
 }

 /* Recompute the visible task for a class when the class membership changes.

To install this patch into Lubuntu, do something like this:

sudo apt-get install build-essential fakeroot dpkg-dev
sudo apt-get build-dep lxpanel
mkdir lxpanel
cd lxpanel
apt-get source lxpanel
cd lxpanel-*
wget https://sourceforge.net/p/lxde/bugs/682/attachment/show-urgent-windows-on-all-desktops.patch
patch -p1 < show-urgent-windows-on-all-desktops.patch
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b
cd ..
sudo dpkg -i lxpanel_*.deb
killall lxpanel
lxpanel --profile Lubuntu