On Thu, 25 Apr 2019 18:37:22 +0200
Uwe Brauer <oub@...> wrote:

> 
>    > On Thursday 25 April 2019 02:31:57 Uwe Brauer wrote:
> 
>    > Another thing that you can try is to right-click on the system tray itself and 
>    > unlock panels. Somewhere there is a dialog that allows you to add an item to 
>    > the system tray. 
> 
> But only the start icon.
> Maybe we have a misunderstanding here.
> 
> Suppose I start tde-networkmanager, say from the command line, it then
> appears in the system tray, where I can access its configuration, that
> is to which wifi net I want to connect.
> 
> I want the same for mathpix, I can start it, but it does not appear in
> the system tray, and that is why I can use it (via its shortcuts) but
> not configure it because I cannot access the configuration menu.

In other words, in whatever Ubuntu's default desktop is these days, starting
the program places an icon in the system tray which provides right-click
or drag-and-drop functionality that goes beyond starting the program, and
which you find useful.

>    > Another oddity: I did a quick search using apt-get, and mathpix doesn't come 
>    > up. I am running Devuan Jessie, so maybe it's just not in those repositories. 
> 
> It is not you have to install it via snap (so you have to install snap first)
> once you have installed snap, then 
> 
> sudo snap install mathpix-snipping-tool
> 
> Will install it.

I checked the developer's website ( mathpix.com ).  The application appears
to be closed-source.  Snap ( snapcraft.io ) is a distro-hostile "universal" installer 
program that I wouldn't touch with a barge pole, and the developer's site does 
not offer the Linux version for download in any other format.  Furthermore, the 
file it does offer is labeled as being for Ubuntu, which with people like these 
who probably don't know much about Linux means they only tested it on one 
version of the distro, and with all-default settings.  They will not have tested TDE.
They will probably not even have heard of TDE.

My guess would be that this thing is calling something that's specific to the default
Ubuntu desktop rather than following the XDG specification for system tray icons 
(yes, it seems there is one).  At this point, I'd install a third desktop environment 
(possibly XFCE or Lumina) and see if it works as expected there.  If it doesn't, 
complain to mathpix.com that their application doesn't follow standards and hasn't 
been properly tested.  If it does, well, we've at least narrowed the problem down 
to "what do these DEs do that TDE doesn't?"

E. Liddell