Re: [Evolution] Hundreds of alarms

[Dwight Tovey <dwight dtovey net>]

Rodrigo Moya said:
> On Tue, 2003-12-23 at 04:17, Dwight Tovey wrote:
> > On Mon, 2003-12-22 at 11:19, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> >
> > > your problem is that there is no stored date for the last
> > notification,
> > > so the alarm daemon thinks the last notification was in 1/1/1970, so
> > it
> > > shows you all alarms since then :-(
> > >
> > > It should probably just use the current time as the last notification
> > > date if that setting is not set.
> > Ok, that explains not only the many alarms that I got this morning, but
> > also the long past-due alarms when I haven't logged in to this system
> > (my laptop) for a few days.  In some circumstances I can understand
> > wanting these past-due alarms, but frankly, in general they are mostly
> > just a nuisance.
> well, they are if you use the calendar just once in a while. But if you
> use it daily, as I do, they are really useful, like reminding me of
> events that happened when I was on holidays, for instance.

Great.  It works for you.  I'm happy for you.  For me though I already get
told enough by the rest of the staff if I miss a meeting.  I don't really
need my email program nagging me also.  I want to be notified at the time
of the meeting (or appointement, or whatever), but I don't need it to tell
me that I missed yesterday's weekly status meeting.

> >   I still think that it would be better if it was
> > possible for the user to decide to only have alarms as they happen and
> > ignore anything overdue.
> not sure if that would be a good solution.

Care to expand on why not?  What would it take to include a configuration
option so that the user can specify an age limit for alarms?  Either make
it a per-alarm setting (trigger this notice within X minutes before the
set time but not more than Y minutes after) or a global setting (don't
trigger any alarms that are more than Z hours past their set time).  Leave
the past-due alarms perpetually enabled by default (that way you don't
change existing behavior), but give the users the ability to disable old
ones.

Just don't take the M$ mentality of saying "I do it this way so everybody
will do it this way".

    /dwight

-- 
Dwight N. Tovey
email: dwight dtovey net
web: http://www.dtovey.net/~dwight
-----
Work to Live : Live to Ride : Ride to Work