FreeLists / haiku-development / [haiku-development] Re: Notification Server?

["Niels Reedijk" <niels.reedijk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Axel,

2007/5/24, Axel Dörfler <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> "Niels Reedijk" <niels.reedijk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > So I would urge everyone to have a look at it from this point of
> > view,
> > instead of discussion priorities, severities, statuses, ignoring, and
> > think about what you really wanted to be interrupted on. I hope you
> > will agree with me that we should 'pull' the tool (= the computer)
> > for
> > what we want to do with our time, not let it dictate us what we want.
>
> While I generally agree with you: some people are actually asking for
> this kind of interruptions - why educate them with a different way of
> managing your time when they don't want to? :-)
Well, people are free to work whichever way they want, but when you
define an API or a protocol for how to show notifications, you are
going to stimulate application to be designed in a certain way. It
will be very easy for applications to feed information to the
notification server, which will eventually lead to the notificatioin
server being the way to send information (so applications might
actually forget to send this information to people in other ways). If
I wrote an IM client and there would be this great notification system
already implemented, it will not stimulate me to think outside the box
and redesign status windows to better cater my users.

> BTW I can even think of some useful non-critical notifications like the
> Windows "Fast USB device on slow bus" message (at least if there is a
> faster interface you could use); a modal window would definitely be too
> much for this kind of warnings. Same for "HD is full" like messages.
While a notification server would be the easy way out for a message
such as 'fast usb device on slow bus', it is actually non productive.
The only devices that would require a fast bus would be storage
devices (or cameras that function as storage devices). You will
manipulate the contents of those devices using Tracker. So when you
post a general notification, you are separating the message from the
work flow. To integrate it into the workflow, would be for tracker to
give the message (I can think of a few good ways to actually perform
such a thing). There are two stages of 'HD is full', which is almost
full and full. Almost full could, again be a feature of the desktop
and of tracker. Full seems to me a status where the system would
definately need user action, so that would qualify for a blocking
modal dialog.

Niels