Unable to lower notification's expiry time than ten seconds

[agaric]

I want to create customised notifications to be shown by "notify-osd", using, for example, Python's "pynotify" module or the "notify-send" program.
I've noticed that the default expiration time of "notify-osd" is 10 seconds.
Wanting notifications that last shorter, I tried to set lower expire-times and urgency-levels. But whatever expire-times (100ms, 1sec, 5sec) or urgency-levels (low, normal) I specify are all ignored, and the notification goes on notifyin' for 10 seconds.

example usages that don't work as expected:
--- with "pynotify":
n = pynotify.Notification("This is a short notice")
n.set_urgency(pynotify.URGENCY_LOW)
n.set_timeout(1000)
n.show()

--- with "notify-send":
# notify-send -u low -t 1000 "This is a short notice"

* I'm running debian testing (amd64), and using software packaged for debian.
used software and versions:
- notify-osd 0.9.18-1
- libnotify1 0.4.5-1
- libnotify-bin 0.4.5-1 (notify-send)
- python-notify 0.1.1-2+b1 (pynotify)
- openbox 3.4.7.2-5 (window manager)

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

Bin Joo, it is part of the design of notify-osd to not allow external definition of timeouts for notifications (to protect the user from notification-spam). You can read more about this here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD.

In addition to that following the development guidelines of the notification-spec, http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/0.9/index.html, you should check a notification servers capabilities using the GetCapabilities call and only use features based on the reply you get. Example code (C, C#, Python) for dealing with notify-osd's capabilities you can find in the examples folder of notify-osd trunk (bzr branch lp:notify-osd).

Some parts of the implicit timing set forth by a notifications urgency are not yet implemented in notify-osd.

[Steve Dodier-Lazaro (sidi)]

Mirco, the NotifyOsd spec says that the duration should be 5s + 250ms per
body line for async non critical bubbles, and apparently the bug report also
mentions that they are of 10 seconds instead of 5.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

Steve, that's why I mentioned "Some parts of the implicit timing set forth by a notifications urgency are not yet implemented in notify-osd" in comment #1. See also https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD#Animations%20and%20durations

[Steve Dodier-Lazaro (sidi)]

Ew, sorry. That'll teach me to not only read the last comments. :)

[Dana Goyette (danagoyette)]

Hmm, is there ANY way to get notify-send not to make my notifications show up for a full 10 seconds? I have a script bound to my "toggle ambient light sensor" key that gives this short notification:

"Ambient Light Sensor"
"ON"

I can read those 4 words about 20 or 50 times in the ten seconds the bubble remains on the screen.
(In Windows, the equivalent notification from HP's utilities show up for, oh, 3/4 second -- so even the expected 5 seconds is way too long.)
If I hit the key twice, they get backlogged for 20 seconds... ridiculous! Is there any way to get notify-osd to do this "update" operation that we're supposed to use?

[frizzle21 (frederik-nnaji)]

why not let the user contribute to the development of the "notification
system", by giving the user more hands on control for now!?

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 18:10, Bug Watch Updater <<email address hidden>
> wrote:

> ** Changed in: debian
> Status: New => Fix Released
>
> --
> Unable to lower notification's expiry time than ten seconds
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/423314
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to The
> Ayatana Project.
>
> Status in Notify OSD: Invalid
> Status in Debian GNU/Linux: Fix Released
>
> Bug description:
> I want to create customised notifications to be shown by "notify-osd",
> using, for example, Python's "pynotify" module or the "notify-send" program.
> I've noticed that the default expiration time of "notify-osd" is 10
> seconds.
> Wanting notifications that last shorter, I tried to set lower expire-times
> and urgency-levels. But whatever expire-times (100ms, 1sec, 5sec) or
> urgency-levels (low, normal) I specify are all ignored, and the notification
> goes on notifyin' for 10 seconds.
>
>
> example usages that don't work as expected:
> --- with "pynotify":
> n = pynotify.Notification("This is a short notice")
> n.set_urgency(pynotify.URGENCY_LOW)
> n.set_timeout(1000)
> n.show()
>
> --- with "notify-send":
> # notify-send -u low -t 1000 "This is a short notice"
>
>
> * I'm running debian testing (amd64), and using software packaged for
> debian.
> used software and versions:
> - notify-osd 0.9.18-1
> - libnotify1 0.4.5-1
> - libnotify-bin 0.4.5-1 (notify-send)
> - python-notify 0.1.1-2+b1 (pynotify)
> - openbox 3.4.7.2-5 (window manager)
>
>
>

[Peter Rhone (prhone-gmail)]

This is super annoying. I have a custom script to set the screen brightness on my sony vaio laptop (FN keys don't work), and changing brightness displays each incremental step for a full 10s. This situation is completely untenable. Is there an alternative to onscreen-osd (I'm calling notify-send with -t) that doesn't display marginally interesting info for minutes instead of fractions of seconds? The offending script is called by a keybinding and looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
level=`xbacklight -get`
level=${level/.*}
if [ $level -eq 0 ]
then inc=30
else inc=20
fi
level=$(echo "scale=1; $level+$inc" | bc)
if [ $level -gt 100 ]
then
level=100
fi
xbacklight -set $level
notify-send -t 500 -i brightness_icon "Brightness $level %"

[kazzmir (rafkind)]

The attached patch makes notify-osd respect the -t flag from notify-send. There might be a cleaner way to do this but it seems to work.

I created this patch based on bzr revision 433.

[kazzmir (rafkind)]

I can't tell if launchpad added my patch or not so I will try again and copy/paste the raw text here.

=== modified file 'src/bubble.c'
--- src/bubble.c 2010-10-21 17:02:54 +0000
+++ src/bubble.c 2011-05-09 03:25:20 +0000
@@ -2182,7 +2182,7 @@
 //-- public API ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Bubble*
-bubble_new (Defaults* defaults)
+bubble_new (Defaults* defaults, gint timeout)
 {
  Bubble* this = NULL;
  GtkWidget* window = NULL;
@@ -2257,7 +2257,12 @@
  this->priv->icon_pixbuf = NULL;
  this->priv->value = -2;
  this->priv->visible = FALSE;
- this->priv->timeout = 5000;
+ if (timeout != -1){
+ this->priv->timeout = timeout;
+ } else {
+ /* old default value */
+ this->priv->timeout = 5000;
+ }
  this->priv->mouse_over = FALSE;
  this->priv->distance = 1.0f;
  this->priv->composited = gdk_screen_is_composited (

=== modified file 'src/bubble.h'
--- src/bubble.h 2010-10-21 16:52:42 +0000
+++ src/bubble.h 2011-05-09 03:24:40 +0000
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@
 GType bubble_get_type (void);

 Bubble*
-bubble_new (Defaults* defaults);
+bubble_new (Defaults* defaults, gint timeout);

 gchar*
 bubble_get_synchronous (Bubble *self);

=== modified file 'src/display.c'
--- src/display.c 2009-10-20 08:51:11 +0000
+++ src/display.c 2011-05-09 03:25:50 +0000
@@ -310,8 +310,9 @@
   return;
  }

- bubble_set_timeout (bubble,
- defaults_get_on_screen_timeout (self->defaults));
+ bubble_set_timeout (bubble, bubble_get_timeout(bubble)
+ // defaults_get_on_screen_timeout (self->defaults)
+ );

  defaults_get_top_corner (self->defaults, &x, &y);

=== modified file 'src/stack.c'
--- src/stack.c 2009-10-20 08:51:11 +0000
+++ src/stack.c 2011-05-09 03:24:31 +0000
@@ -579,7 +579,7 @@
  GdkPixbuf* pixbuf = NULL;
  gboolean new_bubble = FALSE;
  gboolean turn_into_dialog;
-
+
  // check max. allowed limit queue-size
  if (g_list_length (self->list) > MAX_STACK_SIZE)
  {
@@ -623,7 +623,7 @@
  {
   gchar *sender;
   new_bubble = TRUE;
- bubble = bubble_new (self->defaults);
+ bubble = bubble_new (self->defaults, timeout);
   g_object_weak_ref (G_OBJECT (bubble),
        _weak_notify_cb,
        (gpointer) self);