Re: Desktop sounds in Gnome

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

On 23 Mar 2007, at 19:26, Glenn J. Mason wrote:

> > > things super simple from a user perspective. Do we really need, and 
> > do
> > > users really care about, different sounds for questions, 
> > information,
> > > battery low, etc.
> > >
> > my personal opinion is no, we don't need all that. So, the question 
> > is,
> > are there users that use and like this functionality?
> Personally: yes, I like the functionality very much!  I have cordless 
> headphones and often walk away from the compy whilst it is doing 
> something which might take a while (CD burning, downloading, 
> updating).  I really like being notified audibly, and the different 
> "urgency" I can assign to it -- a question?  I'll wander back.  
> Battery low?  Find transformer and run!

Laptops often make their own noise when running low on power anyway. 
Anyway, I guess there's a possible argument for two sounds to represent 
critical and non critical alerts. The point here is would anyone want 
to change all these different noises if they were really good quality 
to start with? iTunes makes a noise when it finishes ripping a cd 
(which is only mildly useful to me at best), and I don't see an option 
to change it if I wanted. Not that I ever would probably...

> And that's before even considering accessibility, etc.

I was wondering when someone would bring this up. It doesn't make much 
sense to me, as you're probably going to be using a screen reader 
anyway, so you don't need to learn half a dozen different sounds 
because you already know the spoken word. However, I'm not experienced 
in this field so it'd be interesting to hear from someone who is.

-Thomas