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linux: desktop notification library?

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  linux: desktop notification library? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2011-05-18 13:29 +0100
    Re: linux: desktop notification library? Single Stage to Orbit <alex.buell@munted.org.uk> - 2011-05-18 15:15 +0100
      Re: linux: desktop notification library? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2011-05-18 17:39 +0100
        Re: linux: desktop notification library? Huibert Bol <huibert.bol@quicknet.nl> - 2011-05-18 18:56 +0200
          Re: linux: desktop notification library? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2011-05-18 18:13 +0100
    Re: linux: desktop notification library? Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com> - 2011-05-18 10:33 -0500
      Re: linux: desktop notification library? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2011-05-18 16:53 +0100
      Re: linux: desktop notification library? Aragorn <aragorn@chatfactory.invalid> - 2011-05-18 18:02 +0200
        Re: linux: desktop notification library? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2011-05-18 16:43 +0000
        Re: linux: desktop notification library? Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com> - 2011-05-18 11:56 -0500
      Re: linux: desktop notification library? Tim Watts <tw@dionic.net> - 2011-05-18 18:23 +0100
    Re: linux: desktop notification library? Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2011-05-18 18:08 +0100
      Re: linux: desktop notification library? Huibert Bol <huibert.bol@quicknet.nl> - 2011-05-18 19:23 +0200

#323 — linux: desktop notification library?

Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is independent 
of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on libnotify[1] but it appear 
to be tied to GNOME.


Thanks in advance,
Rui Maciel


[1] http://developer.gnome.org/libnotify/

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#324

On Wed, 2011-05-18 at 13:29 +0100, Rui Maciel wrote:
> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is independent 
> of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on libnotify[1] but it appear 
> to be tied to GNOME.

Use the Linux notify api directly if you don't want to go with
libnotify. 
-- 
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

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#329

Single Stage to Orbit wrote:

> Use the Linux notify api directly if you don't want to go with
> libnotify.

What API is that?


Thanks for the help,
Rui Maciel

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#331

Rui Maciel wrote:

> Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
>
>> Use the Linux notify api directly if you don't want to go with
>> libnotify.
>
> What API is that?

Actually a DBUS-protocol: http://developer.gnome.org/notification-spec

Don't be fooled by the "gnome" part of the URL, as far as I know most
(all?)  X-based DEs use DBUS for notifications.

-- 
Huibert
"Okay... really not something I needed to see."  --Raven

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#333

Huibert Bol wrote:

> Actually a DBUS-protocol: http://developer.gnome.org/notification-spec
> 
> Don't be fooled by the "gnome" part of the URL, as far as I know most
> (all?)  X-based DEs use DBUS for notifications.

Thanks for the help, Huibert.  I was just starting to look into that when 
you've posted to this discussion.

In that case libnotify looks a bit strange, as it appears that, besides 
the libnotify library, it relies on a daemon to handle notification calls.  


Thanks for the help,
Rui Maciel

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#325

At Wed, 18 May 2011 13:29:22 +0100 Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is independent 
> of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on libnotify[1] but it appear 
> to be tied to GNOME.

There isn't one.  One of the *great* things about Linux and UNIX, in
addition to the fact that users are not tied to one specific desktop
environment (or to using *any* 'desktop environment' at all).

> 
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Rui Maciel
> 
> 
> [1] http://developer.gnome.org/libnotify/
>               

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller@deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
()  ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   -- against proprietary attachments


                  

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#326

Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com> writes:
> At Wed, 18 May 2011 13:29:22 +0100 Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is independent 
>> of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on libnotify[1] but it appear 
>> to be tied to GNOME.
>
> There isn't one.  One of the *great* things about Linux and UNIX, in
> addition to the fact that users are not tied to one specific desktop
> environment (or to using *any* 'desktop environment' at all).

In line with a historical joke: This will be fixed in some future
Ubuntu release.

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#327

On Wednesday 18 May 2011 17:33 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as Robert Heller wrote...

> At Wed, 18 May 2011 13:29:22 +0100 Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is
>> independent of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on
>> libnotify[1] but it appear to be tied to GNOME.
> 
> There isn't one.  One of the *great* things about Linux and UNIX, in
> addition to the fact that users are not tied to one specific desktop
> environment (or to using *any* 'desktop environment' at all).
 
I'm not a programmer so I don't know what library it calls, but on my
system here I have a tool, "/usr/bin/xmessage", which allows for a
message to be sent to an X11 environment, and it appears to be using
different libraries, because its appearance does not resemble Gnome,
nor KDE - which is what I'm running.  It appears to have somewhat of a
Motif/Lesstif style.

The xmessage utility has a man page too, but it doesn't say what
libraries it involves - at least, not insofar as I could ascertain, but
I've only skimmed it.

-- 
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

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#328

Aragorn <aragorn@chatfactory.invalid> writes:
>On Wednesday 18 May 2011 17:33 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
>identifying as Robert Heller wrote...
>
>> At Wed, 18 May 2011 13:29:22 +0100 Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is
>>> independent of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on
>>> libnotify[1] but it appear to be tied to GNOME.
>> 
>> There isn't one.  One of the *great* things about Linux and UNIX, in
>> addition to the fact that users are not tied to one specific desktop
>> environment (or to using *any* 'desktop environment' at all).
> 
>I'm not a programmer so I don't know what library it calls, but on my
>system here I have a tool, "/usr/bin/xmessage", which allows for a
>message to be sent to an X11 environment, and it appears to be using
>different libraries, because its appearance does not resemble Gnome,
>nor KDE - which is what I'm running.  It appears to have somewhat of a
>Motif/Lesstif style

xmessage is original X11, it uses the Athena Widgets library which is
part of the core X11 distribution.
>
>The xmessage utility has a man page too, but it doesn't say what
>libraries it involves - at least, not insofar as I could ascertain, but
>I've only skimmed it.

# ldd /usr/bin/xmessage
        linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fffe64fc000)
        libXaw.so.7 => /usr/lib/libXaw.so.7 (0x00007fe6afcb1000)
        libXt.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x00007fe6afa4b000)
        libXmu.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXmu.so.6 (0x00007fe6af832000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00007fe6af4fc000)
        libSM.so.6 => /usr/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x00007fe6af2f3000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007fe6aef83000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x00007fe6aed71000)
        libXpm.so.4 => /usr/lib/libXpm.so.4 (0x00007fe6aeb60000)
        libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007fe6ae944000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fe6ae740000)
        libICE.so.6 => /usr/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x00007fe6ae525000)
        libuuid.so.1 => /lib/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007fe6ae320000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fe6aff20000)
        libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0x00007fe6ae11d000)
        libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00007fe6adf18000)

These are all core X11R6 (x.org) libraries.

scott

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#330

At Wed, 18 May 2011 18:02:29 +0200 Aragorn <aragorn@chatfactory.invalid> wrote:

> 
> On Wednesday 18 May 2011 17:33 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
> identifying as Robert Heller wrote...
> 
> > At Wed, 18 May 2011 13:29:22 +0100 Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > 
> >> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is
> >> independent of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on
> >> libnotify[1] but it appear to be tied to GNOME.
> > 
> > There isn't one.  One of the *great* things about Linux and UNIX, in
> > addition to the fact that users are not tied to one specific desktop
> > environment (or to using *any* 'desktop environment' at all).
>  
> I'm not a programmer so I don't know what library it calls, but on my
> system here I have a tool, "/usr/bin/xmessage", which allows for a
> message to be sent to an X11 environment, and it appears to be using
> different libraries, because its appearance does not resemble Gnome,
> nor KDE - which is what I'm running.  It appears to have somewhat of a
> Motif/Lesstif style.
> 
> The xmessage utility has a man page too, but it doesn't say what
> libraries it involves - at least, not insofar as I could ascertain, but
> I've only skimmed it.

It is just a simple X11 program that displays a small dialog box.  It
does not use any 'messaging' or 'notification' interface as such.  It
is useful for things like mostly non-interactive shell scripts to pop
up little messages or even simple dialog boxes, without the need for
the programmer to have to write a whole X11 program in C (generally a
non-trivial task), Perl/TK, Python/Tk, or Tcl/Tk.  It is somewhere in
the realm of echo/read or dialog in non-GUI environments. It is not
Motif/Lesstif, it is really old school XAW (original 'flat' X11 Toolkit
Widgets).


-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller@deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
()  ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   -- against proprietary attachments


                                                                                                               

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#335

Robert Heller wrote:

> At Wed, 18 May 2011 13:29:22 +0100 Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is
>> independent
>> of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on libnotify[1] but it appear
>> to be tied to GNOME.
> 
> There isn't one.  One of the *great* things about Linux and UNIX, in
> addition to the fact that users are not tied to one specific desktop
> environment (or to using *any* 'desktop environment' at all).
> 

Yep. I *think* sending libnotify events can be decoupled from the choice of 
desktop - have a vague feeling I have used the same client (bit of perl 
using Gtk2::Notify) to signal notifactions which were handled by both KDE 
and Gnome.

The handling may not be "native" but both seemed to sport applets that would 
handle such messages. The applets are different and look different, but the 
functionality is common.

So notify is probably the best bet. In theory you can always knock up a 
cheap and cheerful X11 based one for the usage case where a heavier desktop 
is undesireable. Even a non gui app that spews them to STDOUT and run it in 
an xterm would be feasible.

libnotify itself is fairly lightwieght:

dpkg -s libnotify1
<snip>
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7), libdbus-glib-1-2 (>= 0.78), libglib2.0-0 (>= 
2.16.0), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.18.0)

So I don't see a serious problem there.

-- 
Tim Watts

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#332

Rui Maciel wrote:

> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is
> independent of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on libnotify[1]
> but it appear to be tied to GNOME.

As a side note, it appears that libnotify requires a bunch of gnome-
related libraries just to compile.  Meanwhile, suspect that all libnotify 
does is basically post DBUS messages.  If that is true then it may be 
possible to avoid using libnotify and simply interact directly with DBUS.

Does anyone have any experience with this?


Rui Maciel

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#334

Rui Maciel wrote:

> Rui Maciel wrote:
>
>> Is there any library that handles desktop notification that is
>> independent of any desktop environment?  I've stumbled on libnotify[1]
>> but it appear to be tied to GNOME.
>
> As a side note, it appears that libnotify requires a bunch of gnome-
> related libraries just to compile.  Meanwhile, suspect that all libnotify 
> does is basically post DBUS messages.  If that is true then it may be 
> possible to avoid using libnotify and simply interact directly with DBUS.
>
> Does anyone have any experience with this?

Not personally, but here's some sample code to get you on your way:
http://people.collabora.com/~alban/telepathy-doc/chapter-basics.html

-- 
Huibert
"Okay... really not something I needed to see."  --Raven

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