Re: Visual bell

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Havoc asked (me) ..
> > Also it should be user-configurable as to what the visual bell does; I
> > suggest the following options for starters:
> > 
> > 1) flash the screen;
> > 2) flash the toplevel-window border of the window that sent the
> > bell.
> 
> What is the use-case for 1), what is the use-case for 2)?  Or are we
> just shotgunning all implementations we can think of and hoping one
> works?

:-) not really; the two cases are:

* maximum visibility, for low-vision and magnifier users (i.e. anywhere
you look on the screen you still notice the feedback)

* better performance/ability (in a minority of cases anyhow) to pinpoint
the app/window that sent the bell.

I am guessing that a fullscreen flash will be too intrusive for some
users, but just the ticket for others.  

I think we need the option of fullscreen flash (which I think we need to
have for various reasons, and so as not to be confused with other
possible visual artifacts like an active keygrab/ungrab pair).  But I
think many users will want something else too; there are two main
candidates:

1) window border flash in Metacity
2) some graphical feedback in the cursor locality (via
gnome-settings-daemon probably).

the first one suggests that this code should live in Metacity, otherwise
probably g-s-d makes sense.  Preferences?

-Bill