[kde-guidelines] Styleguide: Notifications (Was: KStyleguide)

[Heiko Tietze]

On Monday 30 December 2013, 17:11:26 David Edmundson wrote:
> Sorry for the incredibly late reply:
Luckily I've seen it ;-). 

> ++
> 
> Maybe a limit on the number of actions, the API allows you to set an
> infinite amount. Anything more than 2 is rather silly.
Actions in terms of notifications? Wouldn't it be up to the service to limit 
the number of shown information? And per application: Many notifications sounds 
like a bad workflow. An example could be KTp on/off behavior which is directly 
related to the program and rather be indicated per flashing icon (the default 
setting and what users configure are different things).

> > * Notifications disappear after a short period automatically (unless the 
> > cursor hovers over them), but can be closed by the user at any point. 
> > * Stack multiple notifications vertically.
> > * Provide access to the configuration for each notification per button
> > next to the close button.
> 
> I don't think there is any need to this section.
> 
> There are two sides to notifications.
> A client (the app sending notifications) and the server that displays them.
> 
> The client does not display the notification itself.
> 
> There are many many clients so we need to have guidelines, we don't
> need to have guidelines on how the server works because there's only
> one of them in Plasma. (well 2 if you count the frickin' awesome
> Colibri)
> 
> It's also very possible that the KDE application is run from within
> Gnome/Unity/Whatever where we do not have any knowledge of or power
> over the notification server.
This was our starting point last year based on 
https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/110389/. At least the last guideline is 
relevant for a consistent UI. And, as discussed below, the first one too.

> ++
> 
> From looking at the API we want to explain one more thing:
> 
>  -  When (and when not) to use the Persistent flag
> http://api.kde.org/4.x-api/kdelibs-apidocs/kdeui/html/classKNotification.htm
> l#ad9430ebe5109e91358334f6e20599774
> 
> Which matches up with your first point in "behaviour".
I added this hint to the guideline:
* Notifications disappear automatically after a short period (unless the cursor 
hovers over them), but can be closed by the user at any point 
(KNotification::NotificationFlag == CloseOnTimeout).