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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: A new paradigm
From:       "Steven D'Aprano" <dippy () mikka ! net ! au>
Date:       2001-07-21 16:34:26
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Dave Leigh wrote:

[snip]
> > But inexperienced users are likely to be totally confused. "MyDBApp?
> > What does that mean? Why is Star Office complaining about MyDBApp?"
> 
> Actually, I intended that to mean some generic app.

Yeah, I got that bit. My point was that if the user was using Star
Office, and got presented with an error message (via a dialog, or a
notification service, whatever) stating something like "MyDBApp: record
not found" (or whatever), it would likely cause confusion, because naive
users would imagine that it was the current app they were using at the
time that was sending the message.

*Especially* if the originating app wasn't a "user app" like Star Office
or KIllustrator or the sort of program that user's consider apps, but
instead some sort of background process that the user normally doesn't
see: "klogd: error writing file" or something.

Don't get me wrong: I *love* the idea of a centralised notification
service, with configurable levels of severity for messages.

> At work we're using
> Java, and the general practice is to throw an error back up to something in a
> controller that logs it (hence the stack traces). But in the case of KDE I'm
> suggesting that the service would be useful for messages, not just errors.

Oh yes.

> I
> would suggest that most users would be happy to have the list entries
> identified with the name of the controlling app as it appears on the taskbar
> (for easy identification)

Experienced users, yes. Definately not beginners, and even your typical
office worker might have problems.

Suppose you allowed messages with (say) six different levels of
severity, and the user could customize how they saw each level. Then you
could have a pre-configured setting for beginners, with lots of
hand-holding, and another pre-configured setting for experts, with very
little hand-holding. For instance, under "Beginner" mode you could set
each level to bring the originating application to the front and display
a dialog box, while under "Expert" mode only the most severe messages
would do this.

The sorts of notification methods you might want could include:

(1) Display in status window
(2) Automatically show status window if hidden
(3) Beep
(4) Blink icon in Panel slowly
(5) Blink icon in Panel quickly
(6) Show originating application
(7) Show dialog box on request
(8) Show dialog box after [time]
(9) Show dialog box immediately
(10) Send email to [address]
(11) Send pager message to [number]
(12) Log to [file]

If the developer needed guaranteed reactions, perhaps you could say that
Level 0 will always just be displayed in the status window, and nothing
more, and Level 5 will always interupt the user with a dialog
immediately.



-- 
Steven D'Aprano

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