[Konversation-devel] [konversation] [Bug 332539] New: Smart "Use system tray for new message notification" (less stressful)

[Filipus Klutiero]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=332539

            Bug ID: 332539
           Summary: Smart "Use system tray for new message notification"
                    (less stressful)
    Classification: Unclassified
           Product: konversation
           Version: 1.5
          Platform: Debian testing
                OS: All
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: wishlist
          Priority: NOR
         Component: notifications
          Assignee: konversation-devel at kde.org
          Reporter: chealer at gmail.com

Konversation can be configured to use the system tray for new message
notifications. If the preference is set, the Konversation icon in the system
tray switches each second from monochrome to red, or back to monochrome. This
feature is very useful to avoid missing messages. Unfortunately, it is also
very stressful, both for the user and the computer.

As a user, having the icon change each second is very distracting. If you're
busy doing something more prioritary, it can be distracting for a while unless
you resign to flush the notification. This wouldn't be so bad if notifications
appeared once in a while, but if you're manning a busy support channel, this
can be a significant source of frustration or waste of time. In channels with
hundreds of users, a conversation in which you don't want to intervene will
frequently start and generate several notifications each minute, which will
either require lots of efforts to dismiss, or be quite irritating until you
estimate that the discussion is over and proceed to flush the notifications.

As a computer, it's quite CPU-expensive to change the icon each second. This is
very visible in the CPU usage of Xorg, plasma-desktop and kwin. I've collected
the following data during 2 nights, one during which I left Konversation open
and one during which I closed it.
In 9 hours 52 minutes of idling without Konversation, kwin took 3 seconds,
plasma-desktop 31 and Xorg 8.
In 13 hours and 55 minutes of idling after Konversation started notifying of a
new message, kwin took 19:06, plasma-desktop 37:25 and Xorg 22:23.

In other words, when you're idling with systray notifications enabled on a
major channel, Konversation will roughly cost you 1 hour of CPU usage for 10
hours of idling (this was measured on a recent quad-core AMD APU (A10-5700)).
On my previous PC (a 2009 laptop), I could often tell there was a new message
just from the fan's noise.

Multiple improvements could alleviate these issues. A simple one would be to
stop computing icon changes when the icon is not displayed (because the screen
is saving power, for example). If that's not possible, I suggest a single
change which would have a big effect on both stresses...

Initially, the systray icon's behavior is fair. However, after a few minutes,
changing each second becomes excessive, for 2 reasons:
If you didn't act on the notification before, you're less likely to act on it
quickly
It's statiscally less urgent to see the message after a while. The user who
asked may have left, have been answered by someone else, or by himself. If you
were the one asking, you may have worked around already.

Therefore, I propose to simply progressively increase the time taken to change
Konversation's icon. I suggest a simple pattern - a linear increase. Switch
after 1 second, then 2, 3, etc. This could mean switches would already be 10
seconds apart after 50 seconds.

A simple implementation could have one drawback - it may take a lot more time
to notice a new message after you wake up if the icon only changes after 30
seconds. This could be avoided by adding a sign to the icon when there's a
notification, or very cheaply by keeping the icon red almost all the time (make
the icon red immediately, then monochrome after 1 second, red 1 second later,
monochrome 2 seconds later, red 1 second later, monochrome 3 seconds later...).

There is one annoying complication which arises when Konversation is notifying
about multiple messages. Once there is a first new message, should further new
messages reset the interval to 1 second? The 2 goals conflict here. If it was
just about saving energy, the interval would keep growing, but if the primary
goal is to avoid unnecessarily stressing the user, the interval should reset.

For what it's worth, Kopete's systray icon also reflects whether you got a new
instant message. This one never annoyed me nearly as much since I receive a lot
more messages via IRC than via IM, but the animation suggests it must be even
more CPU-expensive, and the considerations are the same.

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