skim doesn't always minimize to system tray

Binary package hint: skim

Skim seems to have a nasty habit of refusing to minimize to the system notifications tray. Instead, it launches itself in a detached window containing only the icon itself. This is on a 9.04 Jaunty machine, having installed the gold release a few hours ago.

If I forcefully shut skim down - via the right-click context menu, killall skim, or xkill - it gets restarted automatically and again ends up in a new, detached window.

If I, however, close it with alt+f4, it *disappears* from view yet runs resident. The hotkeys still work, and if I right-click skim's panel that pops up upon activating (via hotkeys) I can access the configuration window, handwriting recognition via Tomoe, etc. The icon is lost though; it's not in the systray, nor in its own window anymore. Forcefully shutting it down again via those other methods makes it spawn a new window. And yes, the System Tray Icon plugin (in skim's configuration) *is* activated.

If I log out and login, or switch to a tty and restart X, or zap (after having disabled DontZap in xorg.conf), it's still detached when I've logged back in. It "fixed itself" when I rebooted a few hours ago, and then returned now and won't go away, so chances are it'll "fix itself" again if I do a proper power cycle. Which seems odd.

I'm not sure how to reproduce this; I've certainly had it since Gutsy and KDE3, though I always thought it was because of Compiz, since I experienced similar behavior with Adept's Update Notification icon. (It detached itself but obediently docked with the tray if I closed it and restarted it.)

I've yet to find a surefire workaround. It's something that just "happens by itself" and then just "fixes itself" after a while, as if it has to do with skim launching itself too early, before plasma has had time to draw the tray notification applet, and then after some days/weeks/months of use the system is somehow bogged down (after I installed garbage), slowing its (skim's) startup down and eliminating the issue. Alas, conjecture.

skim is set to use scim-panel-kde, config module: kconfig, and to start skim automatically when KDE starts.

       $ sudo im-switch -l
       ...
       The system wide default is pointed by "/etc/alternatives/xinput-all_ALL" .
       xinput-all_ALL - status is manual.
        link currently points to skim
       ...

       $ uname -a
       Linux minidellen 2.6.30-020630rc3-generic #020630rc3 SMP Wed Apr 22 14:14:13 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

       $ apt-cache policy skim kdebase-workspace-bin libplasma3
       skim:
         Installed: 1.4.5-4ubuntu3
         Candidate: 1.4.5-4ubuntu3
         Version table:
        *** 1.4.5-4ubuntu3 0
               500 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
               100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
       kdebase-workspace-bin:
         Installed: 4:4.2.2-0ubuntu2
         Candidate: 4:4.2.2-0ubuntu2
         Version table:
        *** 4:4.2.2-0ubuntu2 0
               500 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
               100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
       libplasma3:
         Installed: 4:4.2.2-0ubuntu5
         Candidate: 4:4.2.2-0ubuntu5
         Version table:
        *** 4:4.2.2-0ubuntu5 0
               500 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
               100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

(kdebase-workspace-bin because that's where plasma_applet_systemtray.so is.)

I'll attach a screenshot of how it looks when it's detached, as well as my /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/skim file, just incase.