GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 590259
Notification improvements
Last modified: 2009-08-10 09:07:22 UTC
The notifications in GPM are quite verbose (for good reasons), but I believe that they can be significantly shortened and still convey the same information to the user. See video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkdaiXXcv8w (produced by Steve Dodier, he's not using notification-daemon but the idea is still the same) For example, right now GPM gives the following notification: title = "Power Information" message = "Laptop battery fully charged (100%). Provides 2 hours 5 minutes battery runtime." Can be made: title = "Battery full" message = "2 hours 5 minutes battery runtime available" Some more information: 1) Usually the strings are constructed as follows: "<DEVICE NAME> <event> <time>. ( <percentage> )" <DEVICE NAME> is chosen to be the verbose "Laptop battery" to distinguish between phone, keyboard, laptop, etc. However, on systems without any peripherals, it could be just "Battery." Additionally, even systmes with peripherals "Battery" would be inferred to mean "Laptop battery," so it may not be necessary. 2) having both <time> and ( <percentage> ) may be redundant. 3) the title "Power Information" could be dropped for something more descriptive for each event (such as "Battery full" or "AC unplugged") Other information: This has been discussed on the Ayatana ML ( https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg00146.html ) (Ayatana is Canonical's user interface, design and interaction project) and on Launchpad ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/399492 ). On launchpad I started developing a mock-up patch to test some of these ideas to get user feedback when Martin Pitt suggested we send this upstream since we would also need translation support and feedback from GNOME. The specification also includes new icons, which is discussed on both the ML and launchpad site.
(In reply to comment #0) > For example, right now GPM gives the following notification: > title = "Power Information" > message = "Laptop battery fully charged (100%). Provides 2 hours 5 minutes > battery runtime." > > Can be made: > title = "Battery full" > message = "2 hours 5 minutes battery runtime available" Sure, agreed. > Some more information: > 1) Usually the strings are constructed as follows: > "<DEVICE NAME> <event> <time>. ( <percentage> )" > <DEVICE NAME> is chosen to be the verbose "Laptop battery" to distinguish > between phone, keyboard, laptop, etc. However, on systems without any > peripherals, it could be just "Battery." Additionally, even systmes with > peripherals "Battery" would be inferred to mean "Laptop battery," so it may not > be necessary. No, I just had battery there before, and I got bugs about _which_ battery it was referring to... If there are no other battery type devices present, I guess this makes sense. > 2) having both <time> and ( <percentage> ) may be redundant. Only if the time is accurate -- which on some systems it's not. > 3) the title "Power Information" could be dropped for something more > descriptive for each event (such as "Battery full" or "AC unplugged") I agree with this. > On launchpad I started developing a mock-up patch to test some of these ideas > to get user feedback when Martin Pitt suggested we send this upstream since we > would also need translation support and feedback from GNOME. Totally, there's no point developing this in sekret just for Ubuntu. > The specification also includes new icons, which is discussed on both the ML > and launchpad site. I think the new icons could be harder to swallow -- but you could raise this topic on desktop development list and see what the feedback is. Anyway, patches welcomed with open arms. Please do patches against git master. Thanks. Richard.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll get working on a complete patch against git master for the text strings, test it, and send it back here once it's complete.
@Richard: Hi, New Icon labels need *not* be requested, Gnome power manager already recognizes these 15 icons: [1] The gpm-* icons are all 48px in the scalable folder these can be used,The icons are also present in all sizes[16,22,24,32,48] The gnome notifications can use these icons Since these are already there in gpm ,We only need the more icons , using the gpm label.if gpm can recognize the 10,30,50,70,90 increment icons , this would be easier. That should be a simpler request,right? [1] /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-ac-adapter.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-000.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-000-charging.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-020.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-020-charging.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-040.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-040-charging.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-060.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-060-charging.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-080.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-080-charging.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-100.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-100-charging.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-charged.svg /usr/share/gnome-power-manager/icons/hicolor/scalable/status/gpm-battery-empty.svg
Created attachment 140279 [details] [review] patch to make notifications more concise Patch for the strings are attached. Here's a list of changes: Battery charged: title = "Battery Charged" message = NONE (message used to be: "Your laptop battery is now fully charged") todo: change title from "battery charged" -> battery fully charged Battery discharging (actually removed in Ubuntu, but in the upstream version): title ="AC Power Disconnected" message = "2 hours 5 minutes of battery power remaining (80%)." (message used to be "The AC power has been unplugged. The system is now using battery power.") Critical and Low battery warnings: If you have no peripheral batteries (pda, phone, kb, mouse, UPS): title = "Battery low" if you have peripherals: title = "Laptop battery low" message = "25 minutes remaining" or in the case of critical battery message = "25 minutes until shutdown" (old message showed percentage remaining and had the warning "...if the AC is not connected.") (Also removed the sentence You have approximately 25 minutes of remaining battery life (percent%). since the battery life remaining and % *beyond* the critical shutdown point doesn't matter since your computer will shutdown before you even see it.) Mouse over notification bubbles: title = NOTHING (used to be nondescript "Power Information") When announcing the battery is full, it now does not show the percentage (since it would be redundant). The other notifications should stay verbose since GPM doesn't just manage laptop batteries. This way you continue to see the power status of every peripheral in your system at once by mousing over the applet.
I've merged a much bigger patch which incorporated most of your changes: commit 0bfe44b903dc12512c7e99579c35bbd62a331d28 Author: Richard Hughes <richard@hughsie.com> Date: Mon Aug 10 10:04:50 2009 +0100 Fix up quite a few translations, inspired by a patch from Scott Howard I've had to tweak a few things, libnotify doesn't like title-less notifications, and likes to assert.