From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Proposed new core library: alert.el Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2015 12:04:48 +0200 Message-ID: <83a8qrsatb.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87io5g2po3.fsf@lifelogs.com> <87y4ec19gm.fsf@lifelogs.com> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1446804322 6409 80.91.229.3 (6 Nov 2015 10:05:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 10:05:22 +0000 (UTC) Cc: tzz@lifelogs.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: John Wiegley Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Nov 06 11:05:13 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZudtP-00085D-Ka for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 06 Nov 2015 11:05:11 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:37703 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZudtP-00056k-0f for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 06 Nov 2015 05:05:11 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:54124) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZudtJ-000550-2G for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 06 Nov 2015 05:05:08 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZudtD-0007ZM-V8 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 06 Nov 2015 05:05:04 -0500 Original-Received: from mtaout24.012.net.il ([80.179.55.180]:32847) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZudtD-0007ZI-Mp for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 06 Nov 2015 05:04:59 -0500 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.mtaout24.012.net.il by mtaout24.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0NXE00A000WIHO00@mtaout24.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 06 Nov 2015 11:58:14 +0200 (IST) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([84.94.185.246]) by mtaout24.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0NXE006R3112TI30@mtaout24.012.net.il>; Fri, 06 Nov 2015 11:58:14 +0200 (IST) In-reply-to: X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 80.179.55.180 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:193390 Archived-At: > From: John Wiegley > Date: Thu, 05 Nov 2015 15:33:05 -0500 > Cc: Ted Zlatanov > > >>>>> Ted Zlatanov writes: > > > Something like > > (setq message-handler 'alert-message-handler) > > > defaulting to nil, to use the built-in. Do you need a patch for this? > > Patches for: > > 1. that > 2. moving alert.el into core > 3. proper documentation for the Info > 4. addition to the NEWS file FWIW, one problem I see with this library is that most (all?) "interesting" backends it supports are platform- and OS-dependent. We don't have any "notification" facility in Emacs that works similarly on all supported modern platforms. E.g., notifications.el requires D-bus, and will not work otherwise (which probably means its name is too general, but that's another story). This probably means that this library cannot easily support Emacs features, but is currently mainly usable only for personal customizations, and only as long as you work on a single platform. I think it would make sense to provide an intermediate platform-independent layer for displaying alerts, not unlike file-notify.el that conceals the supported back-ends behind a unified portable API. Then Emacs features could use this facility as part of their application code, knowing that the alert will be displayed on most or all of the supported platforms.