[jaunty] "Next track" notification appears even if nothing listening

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

Binary package hint: notify-osd

Go to System -> preferences -> keyboard shortcuts, define a key for "next track" - I used ALT+N.

Press ALT+N when no audio apps are open, you will see a "next track" style icon in the notification bubble.

Would it not make more sense for notify-osd to check if something is listening and only show the notification if something is?

[Rick Spencer (rick-rickspencer3)]

Is this, perhaps, by design? It's nice that the user gets the feedback that the "next track" key has been pressed.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-settings-daemon - 2.26.0-0ubuntu3

---------------
gnome-settings-daemon (2.26.0-0ubuntu3) jaunty; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/16_use_synchronous_notifications.patch:
    - don't display stop, previous, next key notifications
      (lp: #351986, #345363)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:39:37 +0200

[Damiano Dallatana (damidalla)]

While it is evident that this bug is solved with latest "fix", it does introduce a regression against the desired behaviour of notify-osd in the specs page. Now the hotkey actions are not notified at all (again, bug #343261).
The scope of this particular bug was "only" to make g-s-d wait for a program to listen and act at a hotkey action before making notify-osd show a confirmation notification.

[David Barth (dbarth)]

Damiano, you're right that the spec does not reflect that. Mpt probably wants to keep it for 9.10, but for 9.04 we cannot make this work properly.

For this part of the specification to work we need to make the change directly at the application level. I haven't found a way for gsd to know when an application has actually acknowledged to change a track, nor if it is going to display a second notification or not. Additionally, it would be nice if the application could let gsd know if it is in play/pause or stop mode, so that gsd can then do the right thing when a toggle key is pressed (most keyboards have a signle play/pause key).

As a result, mpt and I have agreed to revert to the initial situation where we were not displaying an immediate feedback notification, and instead rely on the media player to trigger the notification. It fixes most opened bugs at once, in that:
 * if no media player is present, you will never see a notification, and thus will not expect something to (never) happen
 * if a media player is present and it can play the next or previous track, it will eventually display a notification when it succeeds
 * if there is an issue with the media player, the network, etc., then you kind of know it because nothing happens, and no notification appears -> you know that you have to go and see what the problem is with your media player.

Ultimately, changes should be made at the player level, and gsd should use some kind of remote control protocol like MPRIS does. This is what we plan to do for 9.10 now.

David

[Damiano Dallatana (damidalla)]

Well, if it is a momentary "regression" (it is not a previous feature, so it is not a standard regression) in order to reach a perfect implementation in 9.10, then it can be surely worth the wait!
BTW, thank you very much indeed for the time you spent in giving such a complete answer :)