Desktop Notifications Spec 0.3

[Lubos Lunak]

On Wednesday 22 of September 2004 10:57, Mike Hearn wrote:
> > I can see one more use for having sound in the notification spec.
> >
> > Stuff like 'new email', 'user foo enters chat' etc can be notifed with
> > sound  and/or visual notification. Having sound and a option to tell
> > that 'sound or notifikation is OK' in the spec make this costomisable in
> > a central place, good for accessability! IE, For sound notifikations I
> > want [ ] only sound if avalible, [ ] only popup, [ ] both.
>
> I agree with Christian that this is best dealt with by filtering on
> type/urgency. If the notification server has required config UI I think
> we might be doing something wrong.

 So config UI for server is wrong, config UI for client is right? Why exactly?

>
> > Even without a notification history we gain that every app need not to
> > detect if they can play sound. I some time shut down the sound server to
> > use apps talking to sound device. If that automagicly made gaim
> > notifikations visual it would be cool!
>
> I'd veto adding sound back in for such a reason.

 You'd veto? Have you been granted a patent on creating a notification spec or 
something? Sorry, you have no right to veto anything here.

> It's hacking around the 
> broken state of Linux audio (not all operating systems refuse to do
> kernel-level mixing), and that problem is orthogonal to this.

 Welcome to the real world ...

>
> Applications should be able to play sounds whenever they like, we have
> the technology to do this, now it's just a case of figuring out how we
> want to do it and where.

 There can be more good reasons to have sounds in the server othen that crappy 
kernel support. Apps wouldn't have to link against a dozen of audio libraries 
just to do beep. Or, perhaps more importantly, with KNotify I can disable all 
sounds by few clicks, and if somebody was bothered to implement KNotify 
profiles, I could change all notifications depending on situation just by 
switching profiles. With your way, the only reasonable way seems to be 
turning off the speakers.

 Actually, this makes a really good point. Let's say that we don't have this 
broken state of Linux audio, and I want to play a game, without being 
disturbed by any other sounds. With KNotify, that'd be simple. What would one 
do with your spec, given that turning off the speakers would kinda ruin the 
game, and turning off sound notifications in all apps would be a nightmare?

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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