Re: [Gaim-devel] Usability issue and suggestion: remote file transfer requests

[Andy <spi...@in...>]

Etan S. C. Reisner wrote:
> The fact that Gnome/metacity manages windows so poorly as to fail to
> notify users of new windows that pop up that Gnome/metacity
> *intentionally* prevents them from seeing is not a flaw that gaim
should
> really be required to work around. Gnome/metacity really needs to be a
> *much* more useful window manager for people if it expects people to
not
> get annoyed at it. Unless they expect everyone to play by their rules
> which they probably do and is something I don't much like, since
> applications should Just Work (tm).

Granted. The decision to go this way was made a few years ago where the
general consensus was that requesters stealing focus was a bad idea.
Especially those (like windows and KDE) who take [space] to mean the
user's accepted something. People were often dismissing important
requesters without knowing as they were typing at the time to requesters
stole focus. But the not getting focus idea doesn't really work either.
I commented on the gnome-usability list back in 2004 that neither
solution is particularly good. I suggested a requester notifier in the
panel where it wouldn't bother users until they were ready to interface
with it.

The thing is, gaim is a Gnome app and should be configurable to work
well within that environment. 

> This is more complicated and not nearly as likely to be accepted,
> personally I think overloading the tray icon with this sort of stuff
is
> just asking for confusion.

Gaim already can be configured to flash the tray icon and play a sound
when a message comes in, all I'm suggesting is for it to notify the user
of an incoming file transfer in the same manner, instead of a popup
requester.

> Even given the changes above the request would still not be 'in' the
> conversation window and putting it there would be interesting, I'm not
> sure there's a good place for it and having a file transfer request
create
> a conversation isn't good and neither is having a popup sometimes and
an
> in-conversation item other times.

Again, gaim already can be configured to open a new conversation window
on incoming messages.

As Stephen Elilert mentioned, this is apparently already a feature of
some other IM clients. From your objections, I'm unsure if you
understand my proposal. I'm suggesting that popups be abandoned
altogether. In their place any file transfer requests be written to the
conversation window with a button (or clickable text) for the user to
accept the transfer. Along with tray icon and audio notification
options. - In exactly the same way an incoming message is handled. So
the ability is already in code, it just needs to be moved to the
conversation window.


Richard Laager wrote:
> Look at gaim_xfer_request() in ft.c. We're already doing this. If it's
> not happening in a specific case, that's a bug, IMO.

Yes it does print to the window text along the lines of "Soandso wants
to send you file-x". I meant that the entire notification and somewhere
for the user to accept the request should appear there. Not in a popup
requester at all.

--

As I said, at the very least it would be handy if a sound event could be
assigned so there's some kind of notification.