From: Robert M. <rob...@de...> - 2005-05-31 06:01:01
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I think I'm probably not far wrong in thinking that most people here think that raising a window when an event (be it incoming IM, or buddy signing in/out) takes place is a little infuriating. However, we currently have options on conversation windows and the buddy list to do this for those who desire. Recent versions of GNOME decide that allowing applications to raise themselves will not be allowed. We can get into a battle with them to try and make this option work, but it's likely they will just keep fudging around us until it doesn't again. For an option none of us care about, this is a path of high resistance indeed. Of course, now GNOME will support URGENT, our users can load and use the notification plugin to set the URGENT hint. I consider the notification plugin a hack - it shouldn't need to exist (and at least for me, things like starring the window title and the message counts don't work properly). Especially the fact that it's the only way to set the URGENT hint on windows where you want attention to it, when it's the long-established best way for an an application to allow the window manager to carry out the (sometimes user configurable) preferred action. Based on: a) raising windows is daft anyway b) it's not applications jobs to decide when they should be raised c) URGENT is the best way for an application to indicate it should be looked at d) raising has just been broken but URGENT has just been implemented by a desktop environment that must cover at the very least 30% of our users I propose adding URGENT support to Gaim itself, and moving the more obscure raising stuff into the notify plugin in its place. We could possibly just replace our raise_on_events preferences into urgent_on_events, and make the option "Draw attention to the window upon events", and default it to on for IMs and chats but off for the buddy list? Comments? Regards, Rob |
From: Sean E. <sea...@gm...> - 2005-05-31 06:40:54
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---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sean Egan <sea...@gm...> Date: May 31, 2005 2:40 AM Subject: Re: [Gaim-devel] raising To: Robert McQueen <rob...@de...> On 5/31/05, Robert McQueen <rob...@de...> wrote: > I think I'm probably not far wrong in thinking that most people here > think that raising a window when an event (be it incoming IM, or buddy > signing in/out) takes place is a little infuriating. However, we > currently have options on conversation windows and the buddy list to do > this for those who desire. I actually raise convo windows on events > I propose adding URGENT support to Gaim itself, and moving the more > obscure raising stuff into the notify plugin in its place. the "obscure raising stuff" has been moved to notify.c in HEAD for a while. Rather than merely discussing moving URGENT to Gaim proper, I'd recommend considering your comment that notify.c is an utter hack to begin with and think about removing it entirely. I believe the plugin does not exist in win32 where it can depend on taskbar blinking. -s. |
From: Robert M. <rob...@de...> - 2005-05-31 09:01:44
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Sean Egan wrote: > I actually raise convo windows on events robot101.eat(robot101.getCurrentHat()); I guess that's why you're so narked at GNOME 2.10 then. I'm generally in favour of not stealing focus, so I'm glad to see that URGENT is supported properly. I know Luke and co might still think they're all on crack, but given the things they've fixed as a result of our interaction with them, I think it's a reasonably positive outcome. If you look through that thread on wm-spec-list, Bill Haneman from Sun was arguing that raise on new/urgent was an option that was reasonable for Metacity, given that it supports sloppy focus (ie not stapling raising and focusing together). It might be worth requesting that as a feature - or even looking at doing a patch - Metacity's code is pretty clean and easy to hack. > the "obscure raising stuff" has been moved to notify.c in HEAD for a while. Cool. > Rather than merely discussing moving URGENT to Gaim proper, I'd > recommend considering your comment that notify.c is an utter hack to > begin with and think about removing it entirely. I believe the plugin > does not exist in win32 where it can depend on taskbar blinking. I'm pretty much of the opinion that setting the URGENT hint can now be considered equivalent to the taskbar blinking, and everything else is either markedly inferior or can be handled by the window manager. If URGENT is in Gaim proper, I don't really care about the notify plugin and I wouldn't object to just dropping it. It's always been subtly broken for me ever since tabbed convo windows. I can cook up a patch for HEAD for this in about 10 days time. :) > -s. Regards, Rob |
From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2005-05-31 13:58:40
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On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 10:01:37AM +0100, Robert McQueen wrote: > Sean Egan wrote: > > I actually raise convo windows on events > > robot101.eat(robot101.getCurrentHat()); > > I guess that's why you're so narked at GNOME 2.10 then. I'm generally in > favour of not stealing focus, so I'm glad to see that URGENT is > supported properly. I know Luke and co might still think they're all on > crack, but given the things they've fixed as a result of our interaction > with them, I think it's a reasonably positive outcome. mmm. I would say that Sean is "narked" because I asked him to comment. I'm trying to head off a flood of bug reports for the next N years now while this stuff is relatively fresh in their minds. Your comment about "Luke and co" is a rather low blow. I have said, publicaly, several times, that I am impressed with how much of a positive response from the gnome people we *have* generated. If you paid even the smallest bit of attention to the reading you did yesterday, you should realize this. You are correct, I am not fully satisfied. I suspect I fall rather closer to Ethan in things WM than not, even though I use click to focus, which I am fairly sure he is on record as considering broken. Still, I *am* satisfied that GNOME is listening, and at least attempting in their own misguided way to provide a usable environment for their users. And I do agree that decent URGENT and DEMANDS_ATTENTION support will go a significant way towards defusing the brokenness they have created. Its not a fix, but it may work. You *might* have noticed that while I am still actively drawing people's attention to this situation where I think they might have useful things to say, that I have long since stopped to be a significant part of the volume on the topic, certainly compared to how it started, even if you are not willing to grant that assertion in an absolute sense. > > If you look through that thread on wm-spec-list, Bill Haneman from Sun > was arguing that raise on new/urgent was an option that was reasonable > for Metacity, given that it supports sloppy focus (ie not stapling > raising and focusing together). It might be worth requesting that as a > feature - or even looking at doing a patch - Metacity's code is pretty > clean and easy to hack. > And promptly got shot down. I see no reason to believe that such a patch would be seriously considered, but if someone feels up for the challenge, please, by all means, that is how open source works best after all, when people write patches vs just asking for features/changes. > > the "obscure raising stuff" has been moved to notify.c in HEAD for a while. > > Cool. > > > Rather than merely discussing moving URGENT to Gaim proper, I'd > > recommend considering your comment that notify.c is an utter hack to > > begin with and think about removing it entirely. I believe the plugin > > does not exist in win32 where it can depend on taskbar blinking. > > I'm pretty much of the opinion that setting the URGENT hint can now be > considered equivalent to the taskbar blinking, and everything else is > either markedly inferior or can be handled by the window manager. If > URGENT is in Gaim proper, I don't really care about the notify plugin > and I wouldn't object to just dropping it. It's always been subtly > broken for me ever since tabbed convo windows. I can cook up a patch for > HEAD for this in about 10 days time. :) As I stated in #gaim yesterday, task bar blinking is utterly insufficient. there are simply far too many cases, utter lack of a DE being a prime example, where there is no task list to blink, and as Sean demonstrated, such cases are not even limited to the lack of a DE. One of the things that annoy me most about gnome and kde is the mindset that other than their evil opponent, no one else exists. Reference Rob Adams on the wm-spec list telling me that he thinks all gaim users are either win32 or gnome. Reference the continual bias in thinking across this discussion on both mailing lists and all 4 or 5 bugs (in 2 trackers), that a gtk program is necessarily a gnome program. Reference the fact that gnome continually wants gaim to be a gnome project. Your comments here, while almost certainly not intentionally perpetuating that mind-set, certainly seem to be representative of it. Your idea appears to boil down to "raising was a hack we used because urgent wasn't supported [in gnome]. it is now, or will be soon [in gnome], so the hack is no longer needed. Lets get rid of it, no one will use it now anyway." Utterly forgetting that we saw bug reports when kde first implemented focus stealing prevention and they broke this option. Utterly forgetting that there are still more WMs that don't support urgent than ones that do. Still, in the end, I do not particularly care on this issue. if you want to swap the two options, *it won't affect me* because I'll just tell fvwm2 to raise on urgent IFF gaim. luke > > > -s. > > Regards, > Rob > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by Yahoo. > Introducing Yahoo! Search Developer Network - Create apps using Yahoo! > Search APIs Find out how you can build Yahoo! directly into your own > Applications - visit http://developer.yahoo.net/?fr=offad-ysdn-ostg-q22005 > _______________________________________________ > Gaim-devel mailing list > Gai...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gaim-devel |
From: Sean E. <sea...@gm...> - 2005-05-31 14:26:37
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On 5/31/05, Luke Schierer <lsc...@us...> wrote: > On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 10:01:37AM +0100, Robert McQueen wrote: > > Sean Egan wrote: > > > I actually raise convo windows on events > > > > robot101.eat(robot101.getCurrentHat()); > > > > I guess that's why you're so narked at GNOME 2.10 then. I'm generally i= n > > favour of not stealing focus, so I'm glad to see that URGENT is > > supported properly. I know Luke and co might still think they're all on > > crack, but given the things they've fixed as a result of our interactio= n > > with them, I think it's a reasonably positive outcome. >=20 > mmm. I would say that Sean is "narked" because I asked him to > comment. I'm trying to head off a flood of bug reports for the next > N years now while this stuff is relatively fresh in their minds. I don't really care about not raising windows on events as much as I care about not even knowing new windows exist. I'm not even sure I've turned the feature on since realizing it was stupid and making it a notify.c option, actually. =20 > > I'm pretty much of the opinion that setting the URGENT hint can now be > > considered equivalent to the taskbar blinking, and everything else is > > either markedly inferior or can be handled by the window manager. If > > URGENT is in Gaim proper, I don't really care about the notify plugin > > and I wouldn't object to just dropping it. It's always been subtly > > broken for me ever since tabbed convo windows. I can cook up a patch fo= r > > HEAD for this in about 10 days time. :) >=20 > As I stated in #gaim yesterday, task bar blinking is utterly > insufficient. there are simply far too many cases, utter lack of a > DE being a prime example, where there is no task list to blink, and > as Sean demonstrated, such cases are not even limited to the lack of > a DE. But as Metacity is the last major hold-out in supporting URGENT (that I know of), it should now be possible to trust the window manager to handle it properly without needing to resort to hacks. Better window managers can be configured to raise windows on URGENT (as you conclude). We preach to everyone who has complained about focus stealing or window placement in inferior window managers that it's a window manager policy issue that we'll refuse to work around. Yet notify.c is clearly a hack to work around lack of a decent way to tell the window manager that a window needs to be looked at. Now that we can trust that *most* people will be using an URGENT-supported window manager, we should let the window manager do its own thing. > Your idea appears to boil down to "raising was > a hack we used because urgent wasn't supported [in gnome]. it is > now, or will be soon [in gnome], so the hack is no longer needed. > Lets get rid of it, no one will use it now anyway." Utterly > forgetting that we saw bug reports when kde first implemented focus > stealing prevention and they broke this option. Utterly forgetting > that there are still more WMs that don't support urgent than ones > that do. Although I absolutely agree with you that GNOME and KDE often reek of desktop environment arrogance (of course, in the interest of equal time I quote Luke: "I mention this as significant because I, biased though I am, do not consider any other instant messaging program on linux to be particularly significant, and thus to have the volume of complaints that gaim generates." ;)), which isn't even limited to its developers as evidenced here by Robot101 who seems somewhat offended they were even criticized, I'm inclined to agree with Robot101 on this one. I suspect if UrgencyHint were widely supported when the features found in notify.c were developed they would have been shunned in favor of letting the wm decide what to do. -s. |
From: Robert M. <rob...@de...> - 2005-05-31 15:14:36
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Sean Egan wrote: > Although I absolutely agree with you that GNOME and KDE often reek of > desktop environment arrogance (of course, in the interest of equal > time I quote Luke: "I mention this as significant because I, biased > though I am, do not consider any other instant messaging program on > linux to be particularly significant, and thus to have the volume of > complaints that gaim generates." ;)), which isn't even limited to its > developers as evidenced here by Robot101 who seems somewhat offended > they were even criticized, I'm inclined to agree with Robot101 on this > one. I'm not at all offended, I think the radical change in behaviour between 2.8 and 2.10 is well-motivated but was poorly executed, and that we've performed a valuable function in bringing the problems to their attention, and they've fixed them as best they will permit. Until they allow the possibility that the user is competent and grant them a modicom of responsibility to decide whether or not they get their windows raised, I will consider Metacity to be a bit broken. Hence I will write and try and push a patch to the prefs to do this: [*] Select windows when the mouse moves over them [ ] Raise new windows [ ] Raise windows which demand attention [ ] Raise selected windows after an interval... Instead of only having the first and last option. > I suspect if UrgencyHint were widely supported when the features > found in notify.c were developed they would have been shunned in favor > of letting the wm decide what to do. I concur. > -s. Regards, Rob |
From: Robert M. <rob...@de...> - 2005-05-31 16:01:31
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Robert McQueen wrote: > Hence I will write and try and push a patch to the prefs to do this: > > [*] Select windows when the mouse moves over them > [ ] Raise new windows > [ ] Raise windows which demand attention > [ ] Raise selected windows after an interval... > > Instead of only having the first and last option. Filed as http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=306054 for the sake of argument. :) Regards, Rob |
From: Robert M. <rob...@de...> - 2005-05-31 16:50:30
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Robert McQueen wrote: > Filed as http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=306054 for the sake > of argument. :) And closed a minute after I sent that message. Oh well. |
From: Robert M. <rob...@de...> - 2005-05-31 15:07:56
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Luke Schierer wrote: > Your comment about "Luke and co" is a rather low blow. I have said, > publicaly, several times, that I am impressed with how much of a > positive response from the gnome people we *have* generated. If you > paid even the smallest bit of attention to the reading you did > yesterday, you should realize this. >snip< I am sorry for misqualifying your opinion, it wasn't my intention. All I meant was that even though they have gone quite a way (probably as far as they're willing to, although they may yet make the pager blink if appropriate) in addressing the concerns we've raised as a project, some of us might still fundamentally disagree with them on their definition of what is sensible/correct. That is, of course, their perogative. > And promptly got shot down. I see no reason to believe that such a > patch would be seriously considered, but if someone feels up for the > challenge, please, by all means, that is how open source works best > after all, when people write patches vs just asking for > features/changes. It was shot down as a spec inclusion/requirement. Elijah said pretty much "it would have to be decided/implemented on a per-WM basis". Which doesn't preclude Metacity supporting it. It supports sloppy focus, so allowing windows to be raised (not focussed) when new or urgent is a reasonable continuation of that. > As I stated in #gaim yesterday, task bar blinking is utterly > insufficient. there are simply far too many cases, utter lack of a > DE being a prime example, where there is no task list to blink, and > as Sean demonstrated, such cases are not even limited to the lack of > a DE. >snip< No, my rationale is essentially what Sean identified: URGENT as specified in the spec says the window manager can do what it wants, and cites raising a window as the example. Now that GNOME supports URGENT, the last major group of users who might've complained at the removal of raising can be catered for as best as the GNOME developers allow will them to be (whether or not Metacity gets a patch for raise on new/urgent), so we don't need to do explicit raising any longer. We can remove a kludge in favour of a standard we should really have pushed from the outset. > Still, in the end, I do not particularly care on this issue. if you > want to swap the two options, *it won't affect me* because I'll just > tell fvwm2 to raise on urgent IFF gaim. Exactly - this should allow everyone to be happy. > luke The only remaining issue in my mind is, what do we make optional and what defaults? I think one of: 1) always set URGENT on new IMs, optionally set URGENT on new chat or blist events, default both to off 2) optionally set URGENT on all three, default IMs to on and the other two to off 3) 1) or 2) but without blist event support at all Regards, Rob |
From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2005-05-31 15:28:55
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On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 04:07:50PM +0100, Robert McQueen wrote: > > No, my rationale is essentially what Sean identified: URGENT as > specified in the spec says the window manager can do what it wants, and > cites raising a window as the example. Now that GNOME supports URGENT, > the last major group of users who might've complained at the removal of > raising can be catered for as best as the GNOME developers allow will > them to be (whether or not Metacity gets a patch for raise on > new/urgent), so we don't need to do explicit raising any longer. We can > remove a kludge in favour of a standard we should really have pushed > from the outset. > > > Still, in the end, I do not particularly care on this issue. if you > > want to swap the two options, *it won't affect me* because I'll just > > tell fvwm2 to raise on urgent IFF gaim. > > Exactly - this should allow everyone to be happy. > > > luke > > The only remaining issue in my mind is, what do we make optional and > what defaults? I think one of: > > 1) always set URGENT on new IMs, optionally set URGENT on new chat or > blist events, default both to off > 2) optionally set URGENT on all three, default IMs to on and the other > two to off > 3) 1) or 2) but without blist event support at all I would suggest #2. I forget why we added the option for the buddy list, but it was requested, and should not be a significant amount of added complexity. It is a valid choice, though certainly an odd one, to decide that you consider a blist event to be significant. urgent on chats certainly needs to default to "off." Except for the odd case of multi-user private chats, ie msn chats, a chat has no where near the importance of an im for *most* users (ie everyone except msn). urgent on im I would default to on. My reasoning is as follows: 1)most of our users don't know and shouldn't need to know what urgency is. 2)WMs will continue to support it in different ways even as our advocacy causes increasing numbers of them to support it in some way, so we cannot safely re-word it. 3)if we are removing raise, we need to make a best-effort to preserve *some* continuity for our users when they upgrade, esp. since we are considering urgency to replace that option* luke *this could be seen as an argument to cause the default urgent setting on upgrade to use the following priority A)follow existing pref if plugin was loaded. B)set urgency pref to value of raise pref if plugin not loaded C)else set some reasonable default. I would not object to such a course, but it is more complex and thus more suspect. > > Regards, > Rob |
From: Etan R. <de...@ed...> - 2005-05-31 18:16:24
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On Tue, 31 May 2005, Sean Egan wrote: > On 5/31/05, Robert McQueen <rob...@de...> wrote: > > I propose adding URGENT support to Gaim itself, and moving the more > > obscure raising stuff into the notify plugin in its place. > > the "obscure raising stuff" has been moved to notify.c in HEAD for a while. > > Rather than merely discussing moving URGENT to Gaim proper, I'd > recommend considering your comment that notify.c is an utter hack to > begin with and think about removing it entirely. I believe the plugin > does not exist in win32 where it can depend on taskbar blinking. > > -s. While in principal I agree that moving setting Urgent into gaim proper would be a good thing I have some minor problems with doing that. When would gaim proper unset Urgent? notify.c has a couple options for when notifications get removed and I doubt we'd want to carry them all over into gaim proper, I also don't know that I really want to hard code one of them as *the* choice. Further, while I certainly think that moving Urgent into gaim proper would make sense I'm not sure dropping the rest of the notifications makes sense. For example, my window manager has made the decision that it will change the titlebar color when a window is set Urgent, but that as soon as you focus that window (Urgent hint staying on or not) it will put back the normal titlebar color. So if I happen to leave my focus in my conversation window while I do other things setting urgent won't change the color and notify me. I prepend (*) for those cases, and for when I'm involved in multiple conversations and the tabs are scrolled off so that I'm notified that I got a message in a scrolled off tab. (I could use sounds, but I don't much like them and often have my volume muted.) Anyway, my point in all this is that I can see there being reasons to leave the message notification plugin as it is, at least in part. -Etan |
From: Ethan B. <ebl...@cs...> - 2005-05-31 16:05:31
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Sean Egan spake unto us the following wisdom: > Rather than merely discussing moving URGENT to Gaim proper, I'd > recommend considering your comment that notify.c is an utter hack to > begin with and think about removing it entirely. I believe the plugin > does not exist in win32 where it can depend on taskbar blinking. Win32 has a single function (gaim_gtk_flash) which is NOP on real plat- forms and calls some filthy Windows function on Windows. It is a dis- gusting pile of filth which should never have been allowed while the notification plugin existed. (I realize that Windows users are, by-and- large, too stupid to load a plugin ... but still.) That said, it does not seem unreasonable to move the single notification operation of setting the Urgency property into Gaim proper, and simply set it regardless of preference. This allows the window manager/desktop environment/whatever to decide how and if it wishes to notify the user that a window has new information. I do not think that raising windows is a good solution, and I never have. If I want the window to raise, I can define UrgencyFunc to invoke Raise. :-P Ethan --=20 The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy for evils]. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. -- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764 |
From: Sean E. <sea...@gm...> - 2005-05-31 16:13:18
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On 5/31/05, Ethan Blanton <ebl...@cs...> wrote:=20 > Win32 has a single function (gaim_gtk_flash) which is NOP on real plat- > forms and calls some filthy Windows function on Windows. It is a dis- > gusting pile of filth which should never have been allowed while the > notification plugin existed. (I realize that Windows users are, by-and- > large, too stupid to load a plugin ... but still.) I only meant to imply that Windows users who have a dependable way of doing what URGENT attempts to do seem to be no worse off not being able to append custom strings to their IM window titles, and as they'll whine worse than anyone I doubt it would be an issue if we removed the plugin for the rest of us as well. -s. |