Re: [Ayatana] Fwd: CHI Day 4 continued

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Jim Rorie <jfrorie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Since stereo is pretty much standard, sound could be routed to different
> channels depending on which side of the screen action occurs on.  Or
> perhaps which monitor you are on.  It would help in tracking down those
> pesky windows that run in the background that occasionally the eye
> misses.

You make some awesome points here.

I remember back when PulseAudio was new there was talk about it
opening up possibilities for sounds to be mapped to windows, and thus
positional as a result. I'm not sure where that all went, but nowadays
lots of desktop sound effects can (or should) be played through
libcanberra, which has a function to attach sounds to widgets. You can
probably see where this is going ;)

Indeed, I think there is a lot to gain from that. Sound, for me, in
the real world, is an indicator to look in a certain direction. If I
suddenly hear something to my right, I'll glance in that direction
without exception. One of the flaws with Ubuntu's ethereal
notifications today is that their usefulness seems to break down as we
get differently shaped screens. With my little 10" netbook screen, I
notice notifications really easily, and if an indicator applet changes
colour it stands out instantly. With the 24" monitor on my desk, those
little details to the top right corner are much further away. As the
bubbles get prettier and less jarring, this problem grows. I think we
could use a set of design principles for quietly drawing the user's
attention to arbitrary positions on the screen, and sounds alone could
play a big role there.


While I'm here, here's a patch to support the sound hints in notify-osd:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/notify-osd/+bug/549900

Have fun!


Dylan