Notification services

[Eric Kidd <eric kidd pobox com>]

Like most Linux users, I run lots of software at once. Some of this
software wants to notify me of various events. My mail program needs to
tell me when new mail arrives. My IRC client needs to get my attention
whenever somebody asks for help on a certain channel. Other programs need
to report errors.

The syslog mechanism works fine for system events. But no equivalent
mechanism exists for user events.

Would it be worthwhile to create a standard API for getting the user's
attention?

Cheers,
Eric