unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

With regards to presence stuff, wasn't there some talk about merging
the Me menu and the Message menu? How would that relate here?
(And, on that same topic: there's some talk right now about the
presence options disabling themselves when offline. The Me / Messages
merge would fix the big blocker for that, which is that it shouldn't
start Empathy if you use Pidgin).

Anyway… :)

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 10:42 AM, frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx
<frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> …
> * System Sounds are not connected with notifications (perhaps with Dylan's
> patch?)
>    -> Dylan, what's the status/bug ;) ?
> …

The branch for that feature is here:
https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~dylanmccall/notify-osd/sounds-support
You can follow the links there for the merge proposal and the bug report.

It is feature complete, I think. I'm still a little unsure about it,
but it's to the point where it just needs another set of eyes checking
things to confirm that it is as it should be (or not). Mirco said he
would get around to reviewing it fairly soon :)

The bit I'm mostly unsure about is I've thrown a lot of logic for
sound stuff into bubble_show in bubble.c. That may want to be moved to
a different place altogether. Or maybe my doubtful side should just go
away.

I was also unsure about the suppress-sound hint. I think it's
implemented as it should be, but that again could use a second
opinion. Without suppress-sound, a notification can play a really long
sound and that sound will outlive its bubble. Another bubble that also
plays a sound will play it on top of the last bubble's sound. (In the
absolute worst case that should never happen unless everyone building
apps is on drugs).
If a new bubble appears that has the suppress-sound hint (no boolean
value there; just checking if the hint exists), any other notification
sounds are killed.
I wonder if the intent of the spec was that the notification sound
block other sounds across the system, as we see in lots of smartphone
OSs. If that's the case, I expect it's a little trickier and can
probably be worked in over time.

The feature uses libCanberra, which abstracts the actual playing of
event sounds. It calls ca_gtk_play_for_widget, which also gives us
awesome positional sounds. I think it helps, but then I'm obsessed
with the idea. So, a notification sound appears to come from the top
right of the screen (in the best case), subtly directing the user
toward the bubble.
(It may sound crazy, but it works!)


Dylan