[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Messages notification

[Walter Bender]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 4:40 AM, Sascha Silbe
<sascha-ml-reply-to-2010-4 at silbe.org> wrote:
> Excerpts from Gary Martin's message of Sat Dec 11 05:05:07 +0100 2010:
>
>> > (and perhaps we could add a 'send
>> > a notification' submenu to the friends icons on the Frame as well).
>>
>> I'm still thinking on that one... Chat type notifications from friends would seem like the ideal case for a consolidated, time ordered list of chat messages (not mixed in with other notification types), so you could actually have a valid conversation flow with collaborating buddies. If new messages were shown attached to the given buddy icon context, you'd be hard pressed to follow the sequence of a conversation (that UI would only really work for one on one private conversation flow).
>
> I don't think chatting is a good use case for notifications. And we
> already have XMPP and the Chat activity (they even work with non-Sugar
> users up to some extent!) for that. If there's something about it that
> you don't like, please bring it up so we can fix Chat (or XMPP support
> in general) instead of bending new tools to do the same.
>
> One improvement that came up in the past but never got implemented is
> overlay chat for activities [1].

The idea, not well expressed in my earlier post, would be to use the
Buddy Section of the Frame to initiate an 'overlay' chat among those
sharing an activity. It probably should be done using XMPP as you
suggest, but it is different from the Chat activity in several
respects:

(1) it automatically enrolls anyone who is joined to the shared activity
(2) it appears as an overlay, not a full-screen activity

I don't think we want the Chat activity to evolve in these directions.

>From the UI perspective, it would seem that
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Notifications#Notification_history_as_a_device_icon
but using a Chat icon on the Buddy Section of the Frame would be a
decent approximation of what we want. The 'floating' feature in the
original design adds additional complexity -- multiple threads in
multiple locations -- that I think we could do with out in an
incremental approach.

In any case, it is different from Notification, the subject of this
thread. We can perhaps start a separate discussion under a new Subject
going forward about Chat.

-walter
>
> Sascha
>
> [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/0/0e/Overlay_chat_sketch.pdf
> --
> http://sascha.silbe.org/
> http://www.infra-silbe.de/
>



-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org