Would you want and use a Growl-like interface in KDE?

[Colin Guthrie]

Seb Ruiz wrote:
> On 04/09/07, Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 04/09/07, Seb Ruiz <ruiz at kde.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I doubt that you would be able to get anything into kde 3.5.8. Also, I
>>> think that notifications are going to be handled by some sort plasma
>>> enabled knotify, but I can't be sure.
>> Yah, I am far from certain that there ever will be a 3.5.8 and even then,
>> it would be a largish change, thus even more unlikely to happen, but
>> I wanted to include it for completeness.
>>
>>
>>> I agree, I think that the kpassivepopups are really ugly and growl is
>>> slick but perhaps it would be wise to find out what has been happening
>>> with the notification department on the KDE4 front.
>> This thread is, partially, an attempt to do just that. It appears my mail to
>> kde at kde.org did not go through (the list says kde at mail.kde.org, the site
>> says kde at kde.org), so I will probably re-post over there after waiting some
>> more, too.
> 
> Might be able to find somebody who knows on irc. If there isn't
> anything in the pipeline, why don't you file a proposal?
> 
> 

There is already a DBUS based API for displaying notifications with
callbacks etc. And it is themable:
http://www.galago-project.org/news/index.php

It's maybe too GTK based KDE folks to like too much :p but if the DBUS
SPEC at least is acceptable then it would be nice to have a drop in
replacement. I think Xfce has made their own one for example.

http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/0.9/index.html

Thinks like Pidgin have plugins for using this and other tools like
interactive firewalls etc. have too.

e.g. http://gaim-libnotify.sourceforge.net/

Some more examples here:
http://www.chipx86.com/blog/?p=204


Currently new themes could be created but there isn't a huge deal of
flexibility in what is provided. But I certainly like the idea of
something generic.

In an ideal world I'd like to see the spec implemented in Gnome (already
done if you take the current GTK one as the "gnome" one) and KDE. And
perhaps someone would even write a compiz plugin that implemented it
too! And as it's just a DBUS thing all the apps could just magically
work with whatever one the user has chosen. It would be CrossDesktop
bliss to have both e.g. amarok and rhythmbox display vaguely similar
popups in the style of my current desktop :) (please don't argue that
the popups "define" the app - there is still scope within the general
framework to make the popups unique or to differentiate them from the
competition IMO)

Col

Col.