Re: calendar alarms :: new applet proposal

[sungod <sungod atdot org>]

On Sun, 13 Jun 1999, Brandon S. Allbery wrote:

> Better idea:  a generic alarms API, with an alarm daemon that both a panel
> applet and the PIM can talk to; it is occasionally nice to be able to run a
> PIM in text mode.  Bonus points for the alarm daemon being system-wide, so I
> don't log into CEDA's Sun box to find 50 alarm daemons running :-) (although
> security issues might scuttle that)

"crond" or "atd" can handle that job just fine, of course. Using these
already-standard Unix tools would be wise from a design standpoint,
because the mechanics for dealing with events managed by these two daemons
are already well-established and accessible from the commandline as well
as any gui frontend you care to code on top of them.

I think what you might like to focus on is the actual notification API: if
there were a place where you could graphically configure WHAT you'd like
to happen when crond or atd triggers an event, then users would have full
graphical control of the scheduling (via the calendar) and the
notification.

The global notification API could also be used to graphically configure
events aside from calendar alarms: by default, it could ship with a list
of notification events; say, playing a .wav repeatedly or an .mp3 to wake
up the user; playing a bell-ring sound or popping up a window when a chat
request is received from talkd, an irc client, or an icq client; dumping
the subject line of an incoming email to a panel applet when new email
arrives. These are just a few ways the notification daemon could be used
to bring several events which require user attention together in one
configuration utility.

-- 

"Si jeunesse savai, si vieillesse pouvait. [If youth but knew, if old age
but could.]" -Henri Estienne