[jaunty] confirmation bubble is overlapped by notification bubbles

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

Binary package hint: notify-osd

With multiple notifications in quick succession, a second notification appears below the first. This is fine, but if more notifications come in, the notification bubble doesn't go back to its normal place but is still nudged down the screen.

To reproduce this I open banshee and use the hotkey to skip to next track. I might see the track at the top notification, and the FF notification below it, which is normal. However if I don't like that track, I might hit 'next' again and in the time the FF notification hasn't gone, and the next track notification does _not_ appear at the top of the screen (or even below the FF one - which might make more logical sense) - instead it appears where the FF was.

Screenshots tell it better, will attach them.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

screenshot 1.png - normal operation as far as i can tell.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

Screeshot 2 - note the track and ff in the same place, not at the top

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

To clarify, when I say "FF" I mean "Fast Forward" or "Skip to next track notification"

[David Barth (dbarth)]

This one is either a layout or a gsd issue, so assigned -> me.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

Hey Alan, I tried to reproduce this with banshee, but even with the most current updates I cannot get banshee to show me a "Now Playing" notification. Skipping forward and backward using the mm-key on my keyboard does work though.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

Hi Mirco, thanks for the rapid response.

I am using banshee version 1.4.3-3ubuntu1 which is current as of last
night and is current according to p.u.o. I haven't updated this
morning, so it's possible it's broken since last night. Will update
when I am off 3g and on a proper network and let you know.

Version: 1.4.3-3ubuntu1
Filename: pool/universe/b/banshee/banshee_1.4.3-3ubuntu1_i386.deb

I don't think I did any magic to make banshee show notifications.
Indeed it has always worked for me. Previously using the old gnome
notification system, and then there was a period of brokenness where
banshee would popup a dialog on every track change, which was fixed
for the new notification system.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

To skip to next track I am using ALT+N which I have defined in System -> preferences -> keyboard shortcuts, as the "Next Track" key.

I have updated to latest banshee and I still get the notifications and they're still misplaced.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

Amusingly if I close banshee, and press ALT+N I still see the FF icon :)

Should that be filed as a separate bug given nothing is "listening" for the FF keypress.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

I was able to reproduce this now. It's a layout bug in stack.c. David will take a look at that. Sadly this will not make it for the 0.9.6 notify-osd release, thus the beta which comes out today. I already handed over the tarball to pitti.

[Damiano Dallatana (damidalla)]

The same is not happening using rhythmbox...
(going to change the title, as it is not clear at all...)

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

The reason it's not happening with Rhythmbox, as far as I can tell, is because Rhythmbox updates the existing notification if the song changes. Banshee closes the existing notification, and spawns a new one.

[Damiano Dallatana (damidalla)]

Yes, from what I see I can confirm that "motivation" for the bug not happening with rhythmbox.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

From my observations, it would seem that this bug occurs when the
following sequence of events occur:
1. high-priority notification appears below normal notification.
2. normal notification is deleted by the owning application.
3. another low-priority notification appears.

#1 is an absolute prerequisite for this bug to occur. If the
high-priority notification appears above a normal notification, then the
bug will not occur.

Suggested fix: when the higher (in position) notification disappears,
make the lower notification slide into the place of the disappearing
notification. This should effectively eliminate this bug, in addition to
looking asthetically pleasing.
--
Chow Loong Jin

[David Barth (dbarth)]

Ahah! Yes, that's probably because the application requests the notification to close /explicitely/. In this case, we don't try to match and close the synchronous notifications. Good catch! Thanks a lot for finding the right the test case.

[David Barth (dbarth)]

However, this is a nasty corner case.

In similar situations, what we do for the moment is sync two bubbles together, so as to avoid having gaps. In this case, we could delay the close operation up to the time when the synchronous bubble expires. However, in this case, that would just make things worse, because the user would keep pressing buttons, expecting some additional feedback from the media player.

In general, if an application makes an explicit call for a notification to close, I think we should not delay it. So the only solution I can imagine now is to /slightly/ move the synchronous notification if we don't have enough space.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

> In similar situations, what we do for the moment is sync two bubbles
> together, so as to avoid having gaps. In this case, we could delay the
> close operation up to the time when the synchronous bubble expires.
> However, in this case, that would just make things worse, because the
> user would keep pressing buttons, expecting some additional feedback
> from the media player.
>

I get enough delay waiting for the next track in banshee, and wonder
if it really has selected another track, and watch for the
notification telling me which track is next. I don't like the idea of
a further artificial delay.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Sorry, I'm unclear why this is happening. Here's what I think should be happening, with the current spec:
1. first song-details bubble appears topmost
>> you press Next
2. Next bubble appears below
>> music player asks for song-details bubble to be closed
3. song-details bubble closes immediately, but the Next bubble stays behind
>> music player requests new song-details bubble
4. Next bubble disappears after its usual duration
5. new song-details bubble appears topmost.

Why is the new song-details bubble showing up before the Next bubble has gone?