[Kde-accessibility] Re: System bell mess

[Bill Haneman]

George Staikos wrote:

>On Monday 28 February 2005 19:46, Gunnar Schmi Dt wrote:
>  
>
>>Hello,
>>
>>I think I have to shed a bit of light onto the System bell mess:
>>
>>The mess comes from the fact that we have two "bells" and two different
>>options in two different KCMs that do something different but sound
>>similar if you think that we only have one bell.
>>    
>>
>  And one interferes with the other somehow?
>
>  
>
No, they are different in concept, as Gunnar explained:

>>One "bell" basically is KNotify. This bell receives all events from the KDE
>>applications. The other bell is the system bell, which gets used as a
>>low-level notification mechanism by the X-Server and a number of non-KDE
>>applications.
>>
>>The setting in the "Sound & Multimedia -> System Bell" module is used to
>>get KNotify use the system bell instead of its homebrew own notification.
>>(OK, most of the time we want to have the homebrew own notification, but
>>if the computer does not have a soundcard we might want to get system
>>beeps instead.)
>>    
>>
>
>   Or if arts is just a pain, or if beeps over the speaker interfere with 
>music/other sounds, or....
>
>  
>
One setting has to do with (audio) notifications from KDE.  You can say, 
basically, for any particular event, "play this sound", or "just ring 
the system bell".  And you'd do this for a number of reasons, as you 
suggest.

But "ringing the system bell" can result in different kinds of 
end-results, depending on the setting for the 'accessibility' bell 
setting.  For instance if the user is deaf, works in a noisy 
environment, if the beeps annoy colleagues nearby, etc.  then the system 
bell can cause some onscreen visual flashing or other indication instead.

The result of selecting 'use system bell' for a KDE event, plus 
specifying a visual bell instead of an audio one, in the 'accessibility' 
bell setting, is a logical one: the screen flashes when the KDE event 
occurs.

I do think that it may reduce confusion and make the visual bell setting 
easier to find if it moves from the 'Accessibility' module into the 
"Sound & Multimedia -> System Bell" module.  This is where we put it in 
GNOME, more or less (in GNOME it's in Desktop Preferences->Sound, in a 
'System Bell' section), for these reasons.

best regards,

Bill