On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 08:38 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote: > Peter Whittaker wrote: > > The OS is different - when the computer needs > > to tell me something, I probably shouldn't ignore it. Think firealarm. > > > Yes, that's true. But there are some apps that have fire alarms too - > imagine, for example, an app which monitors your RAID array and > alerts you to failures and issues.
Ah! Now you are thinking like a technologist and not a user, differentiating between the OS and applications based on whether they are kernel or user space, as opposed to what they actually do! >From the perspective of many - I would think most - users, something that monitors RAID - or monitors anything about the state of the computer for that matter - is not "an application", it's part of the computer. In that view, "applications" are things users start to get the computer to do what they want to do: email, IM, edit video, etc. > My point is that we should have clear guidelines about what > constitutes each mode of operation, and we should follow those as > rigorously with the OS as we would hope apps do, as well. If you read my comments on the wiki page, you'll see I make clear distinctions between system and user notifications: Let's apply that distinction consistently. A user notification is a doorbell, it appears in the user notification area, near where the user keeps their stuff. A system notification is a firealarm and appears in the system notification area, where other "systemy" things are. Both use the same underlying technologies - API calls that bring up bubbles - but the presentation is different: firealarms and doorbells are presented differently and both are different from normal apps. > As soon as we make exceptions for ourself we are weakening our > argument And foolish consistency makes a poorer system. Think back to the lack of PageUp/PageDown under OpenStep on the Next boxes, because Steve Jobs held the view it was a screen, not a page. So arrow keys giving you a line at a time were the only way to scroll. Jobs was being 100% consistent in his view, and missing the point that ScreenUp/ScreenDown would have been handy. > I *think* we're in agreement here :-) Actually, not so much. Hence all of the on-going debate on this. It's one thing to see a design, another to see the implementation. Some of us saw the design and said "cool". Many of us saw the implementation and said "Whoa, not cool". -- [Jaunty] Update Notifier icon would provide useful status information https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/332945 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
