Re: tasklist alert

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Sean Middleditch <sean middleditch iname com> writes:
> I have a question for the gnome developers/users - would it be a
> wanted feature to allow the tasklist to in some way 'alert' users that
> a window want their attention?  Apps can have pop ups and sound or
> whatnot, but popups are just plain annoying, and sound won't work for
> a lot of people (for example, I don't have speakers on my workstation
> at work).  I was thinking of somehow making it possible for an
> application to signal that it wants an alert, and then the tasklist or
> whatever app could see this and somehow show it.  The tasklist might
> do this by, perhaps, blinking a different color, or changing the icon
> somehow, or whatever (perhaps user configurable).  This could be done,
> I would think, using window manager hints?  Then, any program that
> sets this hint would have to be correctly programmed to clear the hint
> once it's window receives focus.
> 
> Also, if anyone wants this feature, and I started working on it,
> should I work from the latest released tarball or CVS HEAD, or another
> CVS branch?
> 

Should be done as part of the window manager spec
(www.freedesktop.org); in fact the spec may already have this kind of
thing. Bring it up on wm-spec-list gnome org if you don't see it in
the spec.

Clearing the hint on window focus should be automatic, i.e. apps would
call gtk_window_request_attention() or whatever and on focus_in_event
the window would automatically clear the hint.

Havoc