[KLUG Members] Alert Annoyance

[Andrew Thompson]

Since I'm responding to several different replies, I'm just going to
reply to the original posting...

>                             From: 
> Tim Gray <tgray at adacplastics.com>
> (catskinner), you might want to try looking at your window manager and
> check 
> the setting for how window focus is handled.  Chances are you can set
> it up 

Ximian doesn't seem to provide this option. Of courses, I've noticed
some desktops don't necessarily expose the full capabilities of their
underlying window managers, but I'd need to know where else to look.
Anyone know where Ximian would have this?

>                             From: 
> Nikolas Reist
> <nikolas_reist at sbcglobal.net>
> What about a notification tool that just logs pop windows and puts
> them into a text file?  Or takes a snapshot of them and puts them in a
> png file?

Excellent, but I don't know how to trap them. I rather wonder whether
different applications even use the same alert mechanism?


>                             From: 
> Rusty Yonkers
> <therustycook at yahoo.com>
> I am assuming that you are talking about what to do with programs
> that you write.  A thought that I had (and I think you make a good
> point) is to put an object on the screen and give it the focus by
> default that does nothing.  Then the person would have to knowingly
> click on the ok button to accept the message.

Nope! The most recent culprit turned out to be the quick alarm feature
of the Gnome Clock toolbar applet. I could, perhaps, track down the
source and rewrite it to do just as you say, but the problem is, this
isn't the only time I've had this happen (though admittedly, it hasn't
been often of late).

It just might not be possible with two different desktops and I don't
know how many window managers to deal with, but it seems to me there
should by now be one object or something for generating these pop-up
alerts. That would simplify the task of implementing the sort of feature
I'm talking about here. I do NOT want to have to recode and recompile
every single application or service that generates pop-up alerts.
There's just too damn many, and responding to the alert shouldn't even
be their responsibility. How I write my own programs is irrelevant here;
they're not generating the alerts in question. Logging alerts in a text
file would be an excellent idea, and might even be implemented already,
but it still goes right back to a single alert handler. If that exists,
implementing the delay or some other mechanism should be as simple as
adding some code to it. Otherwise, there's just not much point.

Thanks for the suggestions!
-- 
Andrew Thompson <tempes at ameritech.net>
The Imagerie