KNotify (was Re: Resurrecting KMilo?)

[Lubos Lunak]

On Wednesday 20 of August 2008, Aurélien Gâteau wrote:
> Lubos Lunak wrote:
> > On Wednesday 20 of August 2008, Aurélien Gâteau wrote:
> >> Your patch implements the osd in KMix. I think it would be useful to add
> >> is to have some osd features to kdelibs so that all apps willing to show
> >> osd-like info (volume settings, brightness, backlight, current track...)
> >> can do so in a consistent way.
> >
> >  KNotify.
>
> [snipping sarcasm]
> I believe KNotify is a different beast.

 So that is the reason why everybody ignores it? Well, then let me say that I 
think you're mistaken. Notifying the user about a different volume, 
brightness, backlight or current track is, well, notifications.

> From what I understand, it's more for fire-and-forget usage: show a message
> and carry on.

 Yes and no. You can use it that way, but why it would have all those feedback 
signals otherwise?

> I don't  think one can show a progress bar with it.

 Since there is support for updating data such as the text or pixmap, it 
clearly can show progress. Maybe not a progress bar as such, but is it really 
more work to add than to roll your own duplicate solution? Notifications are 
not supposed to be complicated JumboJet cockpits anyway.

> Maybe this could be added, but I am not sure KNotify is the right place to
> do so. 

 What would be the right place then? The awful monstrosity called systray? 
Something almost but not entirely like KNotify, where you'd have to do work 
like new presentation forms etc. twice[*]? Or something else I don't see?

 [*]Speaking of which, I really hate apps that use KPassivePopup directly, 
since then I either have those annoying buggers or nothing. Fixing of one's 
favourite KWin bug to whoever writes a panel applet that'll just queue 
notifications and show them in a decent way. Except that of course none of 
the KPassivePopup apps would work with that.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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