Ubuntu
notify-osd package

Regression vs notification-daemon: Notify-osd doesn't deal with a large number of notifications well

Bug #357150 reported by Jeremy Nickurak
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
notify-osd (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Mirco Müller

Bug Description

Binary package hint: notify-osd

I use mail-notification to check mail. It (and potentially other notification clients) sends notifications whenever something new has happened.

When first logging in to the desktop, this can mean many notifications. Under notify-osd, each of these takes 7 seconds to display and time-out before the next one is displayed. If there's 10 new messages in the mailboxes it checks, this means waiting 70 seconds before any additional notifications can be displayed. If there's 50 new messages.... well you can see how this would be somewhat awkward.

Notification-daemon took the approach of displaying all messages in a stack, and then clearing them all individually.

In order for notify-osd to handle this case well, there are a few options:
 - re-enable the ability to manually dismiss notification pop-ups somehow
 - implement a stack-based display. Display as many as you can on the entire screen (which should be safe, considering that when you mouse-over the notifications, you can still use the screen realestate underneath it). You could then do a quick marquee/scrolling style view of the entire set.
- Other suggestions?

Revision history for this message
Mirco Müller (macslow) wrote :

For that exact case we have the indicator-applet, which has the capability to do globbing such information, in order to condense these repetitive messages/notifications. Not only does it do that, but it also provides a centralized spot for all kinds of incoming communication (email, IM, IRC). We provide plugins that hook up into indicator-applet for evolution, pidgin and many others. Regarding mail-notification there's also a dedicated section on the wiki https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD#Mail%20Notification, with some hints on how to set it up to better work with notify-osd. Right now mail-notification, since it's in universe and not in main, has not been patched yet to integrate more seamlessly with the new notification spec.

Changed in notify-osd (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Mirco Müller (macslow)
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Jeremy Nickurak (nickurak) wrote :

Saying "Use the indicator applet" is not a sufficient solution for this problem, for the following reasons:

- Many applications already use the notification system for delivering messages to the user. This is a desired behavior, that many users depend on.
- There is no other standard mechanism defined by freedesktop.org that would allow these messages to be displayed in a consistent desktop-agnostic manner.

Additionally, (afaik):
- The indicator applet doesn't have a way to push text information to the user (Ie, message subjects)

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