[haiku-development] Re: Notification Server?

On 5/24/07, Niels Reedijk <niels.reedijk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Anyway, to come to a conclusion, implement a notification server if
you want to. I won´t come in your way. As we can see, there´s a broad
support for it and the work will be appreciated. However, what I would
suggest though, which I would consider more rewarding, is trying to
look at the individual communication problems you are trying to fix
with it, and thinking, alone or in a group, outside the box of how to
perform these tasks in the best possible way.


You know, I think you have convinced me. It really is a solution
looking for a problem, which is totally not my style.

It won't hurt us to wait a bit to see the instances when we need
notifications-like functionality and then seeing what might work best.
We have a lot of good ideas archived in this thread so we can always
come back to this later if we want. There is plenty of other things
for me to work on ;)

Still Neils, I would be interested in more details on how you would
approach the following use cases:

- The user is waiting for an important email and must respond to it
within 15 minutes of its arrival. How can the system help him do this
with the least stress and messing up his workflow?

- The user has an important conference call he has to join in 2 hours.
He has just enough time to finish up a project in that 2 hours, but he
tends to get really involved and won't be watching the clock. How can
the system remind him to make this call without interrupting his flow
on the project?

- The user is downloading a torrent of the latest album of his
favorite Creative Commons-releasing band. He is also downloading some
other files though, so it is going to take over an hour to download.
He really wants to know when the download is done so he can play the
album, but he hates having to constantly switch to his Bittorrent
client to see the progress. How can he get on with his life while
waiting for the download, confident he will be informed when the
download is done?

- The user is waiting for his friend Sarah to log onto IM because he
wants to see if she and her friends can join him for a movie tonight.
It would be great if he didn't have to keep an eye on his IM window to
see when she logs in.

Now, maybe I've "stacked the deck" with these use cases which are just
begging for a notification system, but I'm not sure how else to think
about these problems.

Ryan

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