GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 570188
Obscure preference option "Enable notifications when the chat is not focused"
Last modified: 2012-05-01 09:54:34 UTC
It is not clear for me what the "Enable notifications when the chat is not focused" is supposed to do; especially as I can only select it when I already told Empathy to enable notifications.
Any suggestion about how to make this clearer?
As I don't even know what this option is supposed to do, I can't offer any suggestion...
In French it is "Afficher les notifications quand la discussion n'est pas au premier plan". With this, I am deducting that it disables the notification if you are already in a chat window. What about following the path of the previous setting and make it negative: "Disable notifications for focused chat windows"
But how does this option make sense? Isn't it already the case that notifications are displayed only when the chat window is not focused?
If this option is enabled, a notification is displayed each time you receive a new message; except if the chat window is focused (assuming you are already looking at the conversation). I agree, we should make this option clearer. Maybe add a tooltip explaining it?
Oh, I think I finally understood; that option would display notifications even for *open* windows. I don't see how this option is useful, why would somebody want a different behaviour between chat windows that are not open and chat windows that were forgotten on a different workspace? In my mind, the preferences tab could be rewritten to Active notifications [x] New messages [x] File transfer requests [x] Subscription requests [x] Disable notifications when busy/away Doesn't it make sense?
I think that's because for some people having the window open is enough because the urgency hint will inform them about new messages; while for others (which don't have a windows list) it's not enough. Tbh, I'd be tempted to say that an environnement which can't display urgency hints to the user is broken but well...
I didn't open the preferences dialog for ages but today I did and noticed the Sound tab; I actually think the notification tab could be rewritten on the same model (which is more or less the one I have in comment #6). What do you think?
Listing the possible notification events inside a GtkTreeView is a good idea because if the list grows a lot the treeview will gain scrollbars. It would also be more consistent in the preferences tab.
This option no longer appears to exist. Should probably be closed as obsolete.