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This is an idea to make the notifications in KDE less intrusive. In addition to the fulle notification popups, there should also be a minimized mode where a notification only makes the icon appear in a corner. Switching between these two systems can be set in the system tray settings or possibly by clicking an maximize/minimize symbol on the notifications icon in the tray. Clicking the notifications icon could also show a menu for switching between the 2 modes, as well as other options, like e.g. a history button. As with the full notification system, multiple notifications can be stacked, shown as stacked/connected icons. The area where the notification will actually be shown can be set using an amarok-like OSD placement tool.

Moving the mouse over this icon makes a little description appear, clicking it shows the full notification. After a while, a timer appears (circle filling up clockwise or something like that) and, when full, the notification disappears. The same progress indicator can be used to visualize the progress of file transfers, burning cd's, copying/moving,...

Images on kdelook.org:
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=111192

Vote for the feature request (209402) on bugs.kde.org:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209402

[img]http://www.kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/111192-1.jpg[/img]

wonderful, would like to have an ability to use this type of notifications

Thanks to the new notification system, it should be possible to develop new notification interfaces like this.

yeah.. i just tried ayatana notifications on kubuntu 9.10 .. they look nice in preview mode.. but they don't work at the moment.. still the old notifications coming up...

Yeah that's not bad! I like the timer as well

It would certainly be nice to have more options for the notifications (as well as just general improvements as at the moment they aren't perfect) and this would be a very stylish and useful feature! Well done

ps: ayatana notifications works well after a reboot (but not for fileoperations.. there the old notifications show up)

but ayatana notes look very clean and you can click trough them.. i like this very much.. also you can define where they appear... im looking forward to a whole bunch of nice new optional notifications..

i just found out why ayatana ignores some things and does not allow to interact with the notifications and what this new plasmoid is for.. is the kubuntu team on drugs? why reimplement the wheel? i thought ayatana is an extension to the kde notifications not a new notification system that badly integrates into kde? a standalone ubuntu island.. nothing more... could someone with more knowledge than me please explain this contorverse?

No, you are right. Aaron has complained about this on several occasions.

Is there anywhere an open discussion about this issue (Ayatana)? Even though Aaron complained I like the concept of Ayatana, which is just to notify and not to interact. Therefor you can click through them and this behaviour is even allowed in the specifications (http://www.galago-project.org/specs/not ... 9/x81.html): Notifications are allowed not to offer possibilities to interact.

The Indicator is an optional plasmoid (though preinstalled) which gives you the possibility to notice that you have messages after your work is done without getting distracted through notifications. You can remove it if you don't like it, the Canonical guys just thought it would be good to put this in as default. Where's the problem with this? For some reason Aaron doesn't want it to get upstream, but it's just an plasmoid which can be removed, I don't see the negative site.

Whats so bad with Ayatana and the Indicator-Plasmoid?

For german users: http://my.opera.com/freedo/blog/2009/09 ... -revisited (not my blog, but very informative)

ist just like i said.. a reinvention of the wheel.. good for gnome because nothing like knotify and the knotifications was there as far as i know.. but kde has knotify and even if you don't like it.. interactions are sometimes very usefull.. it could be possible set as an option.. and the kde notifications could be transparent, free postionable and clickthrough either (except the action buttons ofcourse)

thats the point.. the ayatana team could have helped the kde people with the already ongoing kde project - instead they decided to do it their own way.. with one side effect.. their notifications don't support actions.. thats why - at the moment - those actions sent by kde programs are shown as dialogs when ayatana enabled...

now the ayatana team wants to patch ALL kde programs so they would drop all actions globally if they find a desktop notification system that does not support these.. (because thats what the kubuntu team would be doing from now on forever, they want it in upstream (integrated permanently)) this is actually not such a bad idea because its a free destop spec (am i wrong?)

im sure they have their reasons but at the moment i just don't understand why they decided not to help and extend knotify but to do their own thing and i think thats why the kde team was "not amused" about the way they did it.. all in all i think ayatana is not neccesary in kde and knotify should be prefered - BUT the kde team should integrate the neccesary funktions so ayatana is able to work flawless.. after all, they did send patches.


Please correct me where i'm wrong.. i'd like to learn more about this issue..

ps: i really don't like it just to be "informed" that a fileoperation is going on .. i love the kde possibilities to interact, pause and resume... the alternative would be a dialog popup.. but thats exactly what kde4 is trying to reduce with this neat notifications from the trayarea...

I see that there are people liking actions (as you do and I suppose many KDE guys) and people liking just notifying (as I like it or even the Ayatana team).
From a user's point of view I don't really care whether these cool-looking Ayatana bubbles use KNotify or some odd canonical-lib. But if action-less, transparent and clickthrough notifications are possible with KNotify it would be great if some guy realizes them.

Patching applications to drop actions if the system doesn't support them is actually pretty much some kind of bug-fixing because this is written in the spec.

But the spec itself is a bit strange on this point: it says that "an implementation is free to ignore any requested by the client", but "conforming clients should check if it [the functionality] is available". Where is the point of checking the ability when the system could just ignore the request anyway? Just ignoring would make it much easier and patches wouldn't be necessary, am I right? (I may ask the galago guy if there's no good answer here)

PS: We should stop talking about Ayatana and concentrate more on KNotify. This isn't the right place and I will stop offtopic now, sorry for he inconvenience.

So, ontopic: I just hope to see there a few new interfaces soon as the actual one is quite ugly *shuts up*

yes! you said it all.. (full ack)

i like the idea to tell the notifications where to appear.. would this be a separate idea?

As the developer of the Ayatana notifications, I thought I should bring some explanations about them.

Ayatana notifications use KNotify: it is an alternative way to represent the visual notifications, but no applications were patched to support Ayatana notifications. The only patched component was the systemtray plasmoid.

It is true that Ayatana notifications do not support actions, but contrary to the GNOME version (notify-osd), the KDE version will not turn the notification into a dialog if it contains actions: it will show as usual, but without buttons.

File operations are not affected by Ayatana notifications because they are not notifications (and it would be really bad to have them non-interactive!). They just happen to be displayed in a similar way to notifications by default. I personally do not like this and turn this off by unchecking the "File transfers and other jobs" checkbox in the system tray configuration dialog, bringing the old file operation dialog back.

The only notification with action I wanted to patch was the Powerdevil one (see http://people.canonical.com/~agateau/po ... index.html ). It caused a lot of discussion when I submitted the patch on kde-core-devel mailing list, but was ultimately rejected. Note that there were devs which were against Ayatana notifications, but wanted this patch in.

I also posted a patch to make it possible for KDE apps to detect whether they were running on a system which supported notifications with actions or not. This would have make it possible for KDE apps to adapt to their environment, but it was rejected as well.

thank you very much for this information.. i think the patch for kde apps to make it possilble for them to respect the setting of the DE will be integrated sooner or later.. this is basic an essential to follow the free deskop specs i think.. correct me if im wrong..

but since ayatana does something similar to what the "original" notifications in kde do the question remains why don't you just extend kde notifications to work with pidgin and other gnome apps.. i do not think kde needs two types of notifications.. (maybe the kde devs agree and therefore just dissed you)

it would be better to have one system fully compatible with every environement and fully configurable to the users needs.. so kde notifications could be configured to just inform the user without actions and the kde apps would ofcource respect this setting because of your patch..

i hope the will be an aggrement soon.. i don't like the idea that kde developers work against kubuntu developers (since they are somehow in the same boat)