Comment 34 for bug 390508

@Matthew Paul Thomas: So what, now it's "our way or the highway"? That's an incredibly narrow-minded approach to this whole issue. Not to mention the brazenness of telling application makers that they can "expect unfavorable ratings and reviews" if they keep avoiding notify-send. In addition to persisting in keeping everybody from fixing a broken user experience.

I'm trying hard to find my words after such a brash and presuming attitude, in order to keep the discussion polite and to the point. I still can't believe we're seeing so much stubornness in this matter, after all the examples we've been providing that support the fact that We Need This for the express purpose of oferring a better user experience. I'm angry as I write this and I have to constantly edit harsh words out.

I'm left with warning you once again: please fix this, or others will fix it for you, in manners beyond your control. You're contributing to further fracture of the userspace.

As far as I and others are concerned notify-send is broken and Ubuntu has decided to ship their distro with a major shortcoming. Application makers will avoid adopting notify-send, thus, granted, creating confusion in the ranks of the users. notify-send will be forked, patched or replaced.

In those cases where application makers think they know better than their users, the users will be quick to correct them. Example: recently I've had the "pleasure" of seeing Pidgin enable a notify-send plugin after an update, without my consent. Needless to say, the result of having conversation and status changes piped to notify-send was, as you can imagine, horrible. I've disabled it promptly and went back to Guifications.

As for my automation needs, I've given up on notify-send for now. There's plenty of alternatives. Luckily, all it takes is changing a couple of lines in my central scripting library.

I'm still struggling to wrap my head around the notion that Ubuntu can attempt to strong-arm anybody into accepting their bad decisions. Ubuntu has produced a lot of wonderful stuff which has enhanced the state of the Gnome and Linux desktop and end-user experience, but that's no excuse for decisions which are simply bad.

Then again, there's things like Pulse and the new GDM, living testament to the approach "screw end-user experience, Ubuntu knows better" so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. It's ironic though, that a distro meant to enhance desktop experience would go this way.