Re: Suggestion: notify when programs finish

[Stefan Westerfeld <stefan space twc de>]

   Hi!

On Thu, Sep 24, 1998 at 02:07:02PM +0200, Michael Lausch wrote:
> >>>>> "rh" == Richard Hult <rhult@hem2.passagen.se>
> >>>>> wrote the following on Thu, 24 Sep 1998 13:21:51 +0200 (CEST)
> 
> rh> I have a little suggestion for GNOME:
> 
> rh> Completion notify
> 
> 
> [deleted]
> 
> if make install then
> xmessage "make install finished"
> else
> xmessahe "make install aborted"
> fi
> 
> or something along this lines. All you have to do is take the sources
> for xmessage and rewrite it using Gtk and Gnome :-)

I have two suggestions:

1. It would be nice to have different notifications, so you could tell the
user whether it was a really critical problem, or just some information.

Perhaps the syntax could be

if make install then
notify -i "make install finished"
else
notify -w "make install aborted"
fi

The flags:

-i: Information
-w: Warning
-e: Error
-c: Critical error

I think that critical errors could perhaps beep or play a panic sound,
and informations just open a message box, or be logged somewhere in a
window.

2. I'd like to see a X wide notification service that is not gnome specific,
but works with KDE as well (and others). A notification service should at
least be that configurable that you can choose to simply log the messages
into a window that is on the bottom of your screen, or display the things
via messagebox, or... do whatever.

I am not sure whether there is some way for the notification script to
bring that message to the display you are sitting on, and for a client
programm to handle all messages arriving on that X-Display. But this
would be a way to handle this with 1 common notify script (program), which
never needs to get changed, which needs to be installed on all machines
the user works on.

Then you would set up an notification client (your favourite desktop
environment could provide you with one or many to choose from), which
handles the notification and displays them in a window, has a status
led in an panel appled that turns red when something critical happens,
opens messageboxes, or whatever.

   Cu... Stefan

PS: If somebody decides to go that way, yes I am capable of writing a
client service for KDE, so it would be supported with KDE and Gnome
from the beginning on. Contact me via mail.
-- 
  -* Stefan Westerfeld, stefan@space.twc.de (PGP!), Freiburg/Germany
     KDE Developer, project infos at http://space.twc.de/~stefan/kde *-