Comment 26 for bug 428509

Are there any designs for how do-not-disturb would be implemented?

Presently I see the suggestion that when the current presence is busy that the messages should be suppressed when using a full screen application, and the suggestion that multi-monitor mode be respected.

Multi-monitor mode is a no-brainer, it certainly should display a notification on the screen which doesn't have a full-screen application running.

Suppressing messages when busy is selected is a definite no-no, it isn't obviously connected to the appearance of notifications and may be overlooked.

What would make sense in my view is something like an addition to the indicator-session-applet with a do-not-disturb button, it would also make sense to add a inhibit-sleep button adjacent if such an indicator were to be created. Each of these buttons could be enabled/disabled at the users will, as a toggle button and shown/hidden in an appropriate preferences dialog. Similar implementations exist for the MacOSX panel including caffeine and growl.

Other points to note in implementing an elegant solution;

1, Critical messages e.g. your hard drive has caught fire should always be displayed, which I believe is what Mirco and Mark were previously discussing here.

2, Do-not-disturb is defined as, "I do not want to be interrupted by real-time communication, email or calendar alarms, or anything which doesn't require my immediate attention considering I've just specified I don't want to be disturbed", in this sense, do-not-disturb also prevents alarms going off while you're in meetings and similar distracting events occurring.

Personally, I am the kind of person who would like to stop notifications when he's concentrating on a something, as such email and im clients get closed. The preferred use case for me would be to inhibit any and all notifications which weren't "life-threatening". Then I wouldn't incur the time cost of starting my email and im clients up again.

3, With this feature a full screen application has no effect on notifications except in that the notifications will try and avoid a screen which contains a full screen window. Avoidance of full screen windows when multiple monitors are present should also over-ride the specified behaviour of the notifications should appear on the screen that most of the application is on as it's not as relevant in the case of full screen as is avoiding the full screen window.

4, For any do-not-disturb mode a log of events would need to be implemented, which would require de-duplication/combination of the messages and presentation.