Notifications system discussion

[Christian Hammond]

On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 10:40:34AM +0100, Mike Hearn wrote:
> Sound themes seem like a good idea, but I think it would make sense to 
> implement them like icon themes were implemented: a simple spec that 
> toolkits/APIs can look up and use, rather than doing it in a custom way 
> server-side.

Something like this would be good, but again, probably separate from
this. One thing at a time.

> And I agree, with current X technology it's hard to make a pretty 
> passive popup. But with the upcoming support for X compositing, I think 
> we can make some truly beautiful and non-distracting passive popups or 
> even use alternative presentations like OS X style "bezels" or panel 
> slideovers. Well, there are many possibilities.

Nod, there are a lot of things that could be done. X compositing
should make it nicer, as you said. However, since that's presentation
and not content, that too can be figured out and fine-tuned later.

> >Here is my proposal:
> >Elaborate your specs and create the std "Notifier" which will only popups 
> >messages on the screens, and nothing more.
> >
> >-We will create a new deamon in KDE. i will call it now 
> >"KPassivePopupDeamon" (KPPD) but that name will probably change. which 
> >implemtents the spec and only the spec.
> >
> >-KNotify will stay as it and will just use KPPD if it wants to show 
> >messagebox. (If they run in kde. If they don't it will use the desktop 
> >notifier)
> >
> >-Nothing will change in KDE applications.  And others application 
> >(gtk,...) can call the notifier.
> 
> This makes sense, and sounds like a good plan. What do others think? 
> Lubos? Christian?

That looks great. I don't think there are any major issues with that.

> I think Christian will be formally proposing the spec in the next few 
> days. I am glad we are making progress with this :)

I hope so, although the next several days are busy, since I'm moving
Saturday. I won't have Internet access for a short while after that.

There are some changes I want to make to the spec, which I would like
some discussion on first.

1) I'd like notification calls to take an application name and maybe
   an optional icon as well.

2) I'd also like applications to send along a notification detail ID.
   The spec would define a number of standard notifications (which
   we'll no doubt be adding to quickly), and non-standard ones would
   use x-foo. This would allow the daemon to be more intelligent when
   it comes to filtering. Like, if you get a email notification from
   two apps within a very short time, only process one of them.

If we have an application name and type ID, we could do per-type
customization. The one thing, though, is that you'd only be able to
customize notifications that have already been seen, but
(theoretically, depending on the daemon, again) a global customization
would suffice normally anyway. So you could set all mail notifications
to just play a sound, and all buddy notifications from a specific IM
client to appear in a bubble. Or whatever.

The application name, icon, and ID would be optional.

Christian

-- 
Christian Hammond         <>  The Galago Project
chipx86 at gnupdate.org      <>  http://galago.sourceforge.net/
   If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing
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