KDE Telepathy Error Notifications

[David Edmundson]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 8:52 PM, Vishesh Handa <me at vhanda.in> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 2:11 AM, Martin Klapetek <
> martin.klapetek at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 7:23 PM, David Edmundson <
>> david at davidedmundson.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> As Martin posted a review recently I remembered I forgot to send a
>>> summary of a discussion we had at FOSDEM.
>>>
>>> Right now our notifications suck. Most the time they appear they're just
>>> annoying rather than informative.
>>> We had a talk and decided to work out what we actually wanted to happen
>>> rather than just randomly hacking with no direction. We outlined a list of
>>> situations where accounts can't connect/fail to connect which covers pretty
>>> much all the categories and talked through what should happen in each case.
>>>
>>> Terminology used below:
>>>   not connected to network = network manager knows if you're offline
>>>   not connected to internet = network manager thinks you're online, but
>>> really you're not for whatever reason.
>>> (this isn't quite accurate, but it'll do for the purposes of describing)
>>>
>>> When trying to connect:
>>>
>>>  - Computer not connected to network
>>>     Don't even allow to go online. Block it in the UI and show that we
>>> are offline.
>>>     Supress any errors
>>>
>>>  - Computer not connected to internet / host is down
>>>     1 notification for all errors.
>>>
>>
>> ...is it going to reconnect? Or just show error and stay offline?
>>
>>
>>>  - Hostname is wrong
>>>     notify... (same as above)
>>>
>>>  - Username/Password/Certifcate wrong
>>>     Prompt for password/certificate
>>>     Keep prompting until user hits cancel
>>>     No notification if you hit cancel
>>>
>>> Suddenly disconnected:
>>>  - Computer no longer connected to the network
>>>     Do Nothing
>>>
>>>  - Computer no longer connected to internet / host breaks
>>>     Try reconnecting...and then... ???
>>>
>>
>> I'd say show notification "we tried to reconnect 3 times, but no luck,
>> staying offline, sorry".
>>
>
> I'm not completely sure I understand this, but if this is the same case as
> I'm connected to the network but not the internet. Then how about instead
> of trying 3 times, you try after an increasing time limit.
>
> Initially maybe after 10 seconds? 30 seconds, a minute? 5 minutes? Also,
> more importantly, you show the user that you are now disconnected and
> you'll be trying to connect again in <x> amount of time, AND allow the user
> to say "Connect
>

I agree the reconnecting at the exponentially increasing intervals makes
sense, but having 3 notifications per account in the first 100 seconds
isn't an improvement.

We can do that reconnecting as you said but still just show one
notification after the first n reconnect attempts, as Martin suggests. Then
if you do connect eventually, great.

This does mean every now and again (seemingly randomly) the spinner will
start spinning without too much explanation. Though hopefully this case
won't come up too often.
Reselecting "online" from the UI will restart the whole process.

I think we should try and sketch this out in pseudocode on the ML first.

Dave


> This is essentially, what the google talk plugin for gmail does. I think
> it's quite sensible.
>
> --
> Vishesh Handa
>
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