Desktop bubble notifications [Was: Re: Add function to make frame topmost?]

[David De La Harpe Golden <david@harpegolden.net>]

Jan Djärv wrote:


> 
>> Linking emacs, at least x11/gtk emacs, against libnotify and supporting
>> a (notify-send ...) or something usable from within emacs would probably
>> be quite doable. Maybe the elisp api could be wrapped around the other
>> platforms' native similar facilities on non-x11.
>>
> 
> This is a good idea.
> 

Hmm. The "other platforms" thing was worrying me, particularly given the 
build-from-scratch angle Lennart came in on, so I searched the internet 
outside my usual haunts:

*** Growl, snarl, libnotify. mumbles:

Macosx seems to have a third-party add-on called "growl" [1] for 
notifications that seems to be popular bordering on de-facto standard 
and appears to have a conceptually similar (though ObjC) api to 
libnotify, as well as a similar command line client.

Growl is probably acceptably licensed [2], so maybe depending on growl 
on macosx for notifications is an option.

There's a "growl for windows" [3], and similar system called "snarl". 
[4] (haven't found their licenses)

And another project called "mumbles" on fd.o systems [5] (and KDE has 
KNotify), though as emacs is a gtk+ app for the purposes of the 
discussion, libnotify is probably the thing to use.

*** Existing Emacs support for libnotify, growl and snarl (!)

So, um. Turns out, someone (one Jonathan Arkell) has actually written 
some basic support of growl-like systems for emacs, including libnotify, 
called (somewhat cryptically) "todochiku.el".  It is simply using the 
command-line clients for the respective notification systems on the 
various platforms (like the one I used) rather than the more versatile 
C/ObjC/C++ apis. [6][7].

IMNHO core emacs support should probably be by library bindings (or wire 
protocol) rather than commmand line callout as used by the existing 
todochiku.el though - generally more powerful for all systems, 
especially on fd.o.

[1] http://growl.info/
[2] http://growl.googlecode.com/hg/License.txt
[3] http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw/default.aspx
[4] http://www.fullphat.net/index.php
[5] http://www.mumbles-project.org/

[6]
http://justinsboringpage.blogspot.com/2009/09/making-emacs-growl.html
[7]
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/todochiku.el