Notify-osd should know about lirc

[Will Uther]

I'm running Ubuntu Jaunty on a media centre box (using MythTV). There is a keyboard/mouse I can use with the box, but the normal method of interaction is with an IR remote through lirc.

For a while pulseaudio was behaving badly (hey, it was a jaunty alpha), and crashing regularly. This would then leave a crash notification that often wouldn't go away without being clicked on.

It would be nice if notify-osd was lirc aware somehow. No, I can't think of a good UI for this, but I thought I'd bring up the issue. One thought I had is that there should be special notify-osd daemon that interfaces with mythtv. It could handle lirc interaction, and use mythtvosd to display urgent alerts when video is being played.

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

Removing the MythTV project for now because this particular project is the link to upstream (issues flagged in trac at svn.mythtv.org). If a patch gets submitted here or there which modifies mythtv then we can point to it, but until then, I don't believe this is the correct bucket.

[Will Uther (willu-mailinglists)]

I just added a suggestion to the mythtv wishlist:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Feature_Wishlist_%28Frontend_Addons%29

But I don't expect that to have any effect at all.

I'm really not sure what the best solution to the problem is. Should Notify-OSD be modified to work on systems that are lirc-controlled? Should mythtv be modified to handle notifications?

At the very least the designers of Notify-OSD should be aware of the issue.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking for here.

What specifically is happening that shouldn't happen, or what isn't happening that should be happening?

[Will Uther (willu-mailinglists)]

I want to be able to make all notifications go away using other (not mouse/keyboard) forms of input. Specifically, imagine a media centre box that uses the Linux Infra-red Remote Control (LIRC - www.lirc.org) system for its interaction.

Current behaviour:

  - App crashes (annoying, but let's assume this is just going to happen occasionally)
  - Something notices the crash and raises a notification
  - User is now stuck with notification on their screen and no way of dismissing it short of finding a mouse and plugging it in just to dismiss the notification.

  I am not entirely sure that the crash notification is a NotifyOSD notification. All the docs I've read suggest that NotifyOSD things should go away by themselves, mostly. They are allowed to stick around if there is no mouse movement - which, of course, there isn't in a media centre without a mouse.

Suggested behaviour:
  - Detect LIRC signals and if you see remote-control activity, then treat that like mouse movement and expire any notifications.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

I think this is referring to apport, not notify-osd. Notifications are
always temporary, I think the reporter is referring to a dialog that is
displayed by apport when a crash is detected on the system.

If that's the case, then the title of the bug should be amended to
something like "apport dialog appears over fullscreen media".

I don't know if there is a more general question about such dialogs when
they appear. Famous / notorious examples would include the dialog
presented by update manager when new security updates are available. My
sense is that they should appear minimised and call for attention, but I
don't yet have a clear view on how that should interact with a
fullscreen application. Since that's really a question about the way one
becomes aware of activity on the system I'm cc'ding the Ayatana mailing
list on this to draw their attention to the subject.

If the issue *is* more general, then it may be a dup of an existing bug.
If there isn't a bug yet that deals with the general case of fullscreen
apps and new windows, then the title of this bug could be "new windows
calling for attention open over fullscreen app".

Mark

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

Will, could you perhaps provide a screenshot of the "crash-dialog" you refer to? This is just to be sure and verify Mark's guess regarding it being Apport you're talking about.

[Will Uther (willu-mailinglists)]

Actually I can't, as the bug that was causing the crash was fixed a while ago :). I just had a look at the wiki entry on Apport - that was the dialog. Sorry for the noise here.

While I'm here a comment on Mark's response though: I'm not sure the problem is "apport dialog appears over fullscreen media" so much as "apport dialog cannot be dismissed without keyboard or mouse". I'm happy to know that something crashed. I just want to be able to set it so that the default response happens on a timeout, or on a (particular? generic?) lirc event.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

Ok, I marked it as "invalid" in regards to notify-osd then.