Merge notifications of two incoming messages from the same person

[Stuart Langridge]

If I receive two messages from the same person when Quassel is not focused, I get, on Ubuntu, two separate notification bubbles (with "Show messages in indicator" turned on), and the second bubble waits for the first to disappear. It would be nice if the second message updated the first message's bubble to show both messages: that is, if the notifications were "merged". Ubuntu's notification service supports this merging, as mentioned at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD#Merging_notifications.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: quassel 0.8.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-19.30-generic 3.5.7
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-19-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu6
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: 4d186c1dd89d3ba4cb89f5ee55713686
CheckboxSystem: bb422ca46d02494cdbc459927a98bc2f
Date: Fri Dec 21 14:33:49 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2011-12-11 (375 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Alpha amd64 (20111211)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: quassel
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-20 (62 days ago)

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Quassel uses KDE's standard notification system.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

I reckon this should be moved upstream actually. Perhaps Aurelien has some input as to which component actually needs changing here. AFAIK the knotification API does not really support persistence as it would be required to conduct merging, as the api predates the FDO thing.

[Aurélien Gâteau (agateau)]

The FDO spec does not explicitly support merging. What happens is notify-osd remembers the last notification and merges the new one in it if it satisfies a set of rules mentioned here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD#Merging_notifications

One of those rules is that the application must set a particular hint in the notification. Quoting notify-osd page:
"""
If the hint “x-canonical-append” is supplied with a string value “allowed”, and replaces_id is not specified, the bubble should be treated as if it allows merging.
"""

KNotification API does not let the application pass custom hints, so it is impossible for any application using this API to support merging notifications. It could be possible to fix this by doing one of those:

1. Remove the need for the "x-canonical-append" hint in notify-osd.

2. Modify knotify (the daemon handling notifications behind KNotification) to always pass the "x-canonical-append" hint.

3. Extend KNotification and knotify to allow applications to pass arbitrary hints *and* patch applications to pass the "x-canonical-append" hint.

Of those three, 1. seems doable, 2 and 3 are unlikely to happen.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.