Re: Request for Comments: GNOME Notifier

[Chipzz <chipzz ULYSSIS Org>]

This allready exists and is called dashboard. But I thought I heard it
was discontinued :/.

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Franco Catrin L. wrote:

> I want to receive some ideas and thoughts from you about a User
> Notification System for GNOME, or better than that, a Desktop User
> Notification System.
>
> I understand a DUNS as a single place where all notifications are sent
> and presented in some way to the user.  For example to receive a message
> when a new mail arrives or when a friend is online.
>
> This email is based on some ideas presented here:
>
> http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/Mar-12.html
>
> and here
>
> http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5659
>
> I am not a GNOME neither a DBUS expert, so please put down any flame
> machine.  I put together some working code as "notifier" in GNOME CVS,
> I've taken some code from here and there. It does almost nothing but is
> the base code for a notification application. I don't want to write just
> an application to "fill the space", I hope to gather ideas to write a
> good specification for an application of this type before continue on
> writing any code.
>
> I think that the notification service should be Desktop independant, and
> it should be seen as a facility provided by the Desktop Environment.  In
> this sense it should be an specification of FreeDesktop.org.
>
> An application that wants to notify the user should send a D-Bus message
> to the notification system.  An application listening for these messages
> is responsible of showing them in some way.  GNOME Notifier should be an
> application of this type.
>
> So we have:
>
> Aplications -> DBUS -> Notifier Application (GNOME Notifier, KDE
> Notifier, XFCE Notifier, etc)
>
>
> For this spec to be successful, there should be several types of
> messages, depending of the priority and interactivity required for it.
> It's not the same to have a message about "new wireless network
> discovered" than "battery is 10% and disconnected from power source".
>
> Depending on the type of the message, the application can do something
> different.  For example for low priority messages, there should be a
> small unobstrusive popup that hides itself after a few seconds ("network
> cable disconnected"), but other may requiere some interaction ("low disk
> space").
>
> I have thought that some messages need to remain visibles to the user
> until he notifies the application that the messages were seen.  I don't
> like the idea of stacking popups, because it fills up the screen and the
> size mismatch of the different notifications make them look odd.  I
> think that a better idea may be to first show the notification popup,
> and after a few seconds convert it in an icon in the same notification
> area applet, using the same icon provided for the notification, or may
> be a set of icons (animation).
>
> Take for example a "new email arrived" message.  Instead of having a
> separate application that ask the server for new emails.  The same
> application that you use to read emails and where all your configuration
> is created, should send a message to the notification system telling the
> user that he/she has a new email.
>
> evolution    ->
> sylpheed     ->  Notification Bus -> GNOME Notifier/Other
> thunderbird  ->
>
> If the user is not in his desktop, it would be a bad idea to stack
> notifications on his screen. Instead of that, the GNOME notifier will
> create a new icon (using the icon provided by the application) where the
> user can see this notification when he sits in front of the computer
> again.
>
> If a new message of this type is sent again, GNOME notifier will add
> this information to the icon created, instead of creating a new icon.
>
> [This is a notifier advocay text: As a side effect, you can see that an
> specialized application will work better in this case than the typical
> mail applet.  You have your email configuration in just one place, say
> evolution, and this application has better knowledge of what type of
> notification the user may need.  For example you could tell evolution to
> notifiy you when that "important" mail arrives, or notify you when you
> recevie an email from a specific contact.  So the notification will not
> be just "you have an email", but "you received a response about 'GNOME
> Notifier'".  Add to that that the same evolution application can notify
> you when a certain event is about to happen.  There is a lot of
> integration work that can be done there]
>
> These are some types of notifications that I can think of.  I hope to
> receive more from you:
>
> - battery status
> - new email
> - new instant message
> - buddy has (dis)connected
> - network (dis)connected
> - wireless network discovered
> - incoming event (task, meeting.... related to evolution-data-server)
> - download finished
> - USB device connected
>
>

Chipzz AKA
Jan Van Buggenhout
-- 

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                 UNIX isn't dead - It just smells funny
                           Chipzz ULYSSIS Org
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"Baldric, you wouldn't recognize a subtle plan if it painted itself pur-
 ple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing 'subtle plans are here a-
 gain'."