In your function, the actual command send to shell is 'notify-send Time is
up! 1 minutes'

dove@bash-4.2$ notify-send Time is up! 1 minutes
Invalid number of options.

You should modify your function in this way, quote notification string
before send it to your shell

(defun show-notification (notification)
 (shell-command (format "notify-send '%s'" notification) )
)


2011/6/7 Benjamin Slade <slade@jnanam.net>

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to set up tea-time.el to use native linux notification
> (through notify-send).
>
> The current "notification function" in tea-time.el is:
>
> ------------
> (defun show-notification (notification)
>  "Show notification. Use mumbles."
>  (if (program-exists "mumbles-send")
>    (start-process "tea-time-mumble-notification" nil "mumbles-send"
> notification)
>  (message notification)
>  ))
> ---------------
>
>
>
> What would be the most straightforward way of using _notify-send_ in
> this function?
>
> (I tried:
>
> ---
> (defun show-notification (notification)
>  (shell-command (concat "notify-send " notification)
> ))
> ---
>
> but I get an "Invalid number of options" error.)
>
> thanks,
>  --Ben
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Benjamin Slade
> Dept. of Linguistics
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> [ http://www.jnanam.net/slade/ ]
>
> Stæfcræft & Vyākaraṇa (lingblog) - http://staefcraeft.blogspot.com
> The Babbage Files (techblog) - http://babbagefiles.blogspot.com
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   परो ऽक्ष॑कामा हि देवाः
>     'The gods love the obscure.' (Śatapathabrāmaṇa 6.1.1.2)
>
>


-- 
M-x Thinks