Implement v2 notification spec #1298

jsparber · 2024-03-08T16:07:32Z

After lot of consideration I started implementing parts of the proposed and discussed notification API

For now this includes:

Set icon additionally via file descriptor
Set sound via bytes, file descriptor
desktop-file-id property
markup-body property
display-hint property
~~new actions, similar to buttons (the name may be a little confusing, open for suggestions)~~ Part of buttons now
~~content-type~~ category property
Button purpose
Supported options for ~~content-type~~ category, ~~action purpose~~ and button purpose API

This needs changes in libportal flatpak/libportal#147 for tests.

I also started writing the changes needed in xdg-desktop-portal-gtk: https://github.com/jsparber/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk/tree/implement_notification_v2 and other portal backends need to do the same thing.

Parts that didn't made it from #1304 into this MR may be added it a later revision of the portal.

Fixes: #485

Mikenux · 2024-03-08T18:11:28Z

What is the case for letting an app play a sound freely? In the discussion there was talk of linking sound playback to specific cases, e.g. alarm, new message, new email. Also, it seems to me that the question of custom sounds versus system sounds still needs to be resolved for these example cases, unless there is a valid case to allow an app to play sound freely.

jsparber · 2024-03-08T18:34:01Z

What is the case for letting an app play a sound freely?

It's not that apps are allowed to play sound freely, they are allowed to set it. The server may decided whether to play the sound. In GNOME Shell we have a policy system that controls whether a notification can have a sound or not.

In the discussion there was talk of linking sound playback to specific cases, e.g. alarm, new message, new email.

I think this doesn't need to be exclusive and I don't see how it would conflict with class specific sounds.

Also, it seems to me that the question of custom sounds versus system sounds still needs to be resolved for these example cases, unless there is a valid case to allow an app to play sound freely.

Apps already can play any sound if they have the correct sandbox permission. So we prefer that apps use the notification sound so that the system policy can be respected e.g. do-not-disturb. Although, we may want to restrict the type and length of the sound a notification can have.

ilya-fedin · 2024-03-09T00:09:38Z

What is driving me nuts in the freedesktop notification spec is that there's no way to know that system sounds are supported and which music formats are supported for custom sounds. This made the sound spec part just unusable when I attempted to play sound with it:

First I tried to set .mp3 files via sound-file. No notification daemon has played it. The .mp3 file may come from embedded resources of the application or from the cloud uploaded by the user (so pre-converting the embedded one won't really help). The application has no transcoding capabilities and there's no manpower to implement it in the application.
Then I tried to set sound-name to message-new-instant. To my surprise this worked only on GNOME and Pantheon. KDE, MATE, Xfce, LXQt, Budgie, Cinnamon, Deepin: none of them were able to play it. Deepin was always playing its own sound, even with disable-sound = true. Although, KDE and Deepin don't support the sound capability at all so their behavior is quite expected.
Ok, let's set sound-name only when it's supported and only when the user has chosen the default sound embedded in the application resources (so the user choice is still respected yet most users will get sound via notification daemon). No, you can't, there's only sound capability that says "sound-file must be supported and sound-name may be supported".

This resulted in application always playing the notification sound on its own. I really hope these problems will be solved in the new API.

data/org.freedesktop.portal.Notification.xml

Adding a notification may fail, instead of waiting for the timeout we can check the result we get in the callback.

For debugging it's important that the backend doesn't just crash without telling the reason. It would be even nicer if the test would fail immediately instead of hitting the timeout, but that' currently not possible since the client doesn't know whether the backend failed.

We can reuse most of the test setup for all tests. This will make it easier to test more properties.

This filters unsupported properties from a notification request without failing it. This allows backwards compatibility after adding new properties. This should had been the case from the beginning so that we don't have to break API when extending the notification interface. See [1]. [1] https://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-api-design.html#extensibility

This allows setting a custom path for the icon validator, especially useful when testing without installing.

The sandbox for the icon-validator needs a privileged container. And it needs librsvg to be able to validate SVGs.

If debug messages are turned on the output of validate-icon isn't a valid key file since it contains log output as well.

Mikenux · 2024-04-13T13:57:57Z

Apps already can play any sound if they have the correct sandbox permission. So we prefer that apps use the notification sound so that the system policy can be respected e.g. do-not-disturb.

I think one thing to check is if there are static permissions that can help apps guess what mode the device is in (sound, vibration, silent, DND). For example, alarms will certainly be allowed by users, because they are logically important to them. In fact, apps that will use alarm notifications will be able to play sound (because in any mode you cannot completely mute the sound, unless it can be done selectively without dynamic permission), but especially to present a notification (even more so if this is also not constrained by specific experience and actions).

src/notification.c

swick · 2024-04-30T12:02:17Z

src/notification.c

+      gunichar c = g_utf8_get_char (str);
+      gboolean needs_space = FALSE;
+
+      while (g_unichar_isspace (c) && *str)


*str is always true here because of the while loop check.

meson.build

src/notification.c

src/xdp-utils.c

RushingAlien · 2024-05-07T02:51:15Z

Should something like a progress bar support be added here? for the likes of file transfer or download operation notification?

swick · 2024-05-07T08:48:45Z

Sounds like a good addition to me but we should focus on getting the current scope done first.

This property allows applications to specify a sound to be played whenever the notification is displayed. The format used is inspired by the serialized from of GIcons.

The `markup-body` property allows applications to set markup on the body. The used markup is a subset of html limted to <b>, <i> and <a>.

The `desktop-file-id` allows applications to specify the desktop file that should be used to look up information about the app. This is especially useful for unsandboxed apps where the portal can't look up the desktop file id based on the app id.

This property allows apps to specify how the notification is displayed.

We need to hand out the activation token for XDG Activation in some way. I think it's pretty nice that we can just add the same platform data as used for DBus Activation to the ActionInvoked signal.

The category allows the notification server to handle specific notification different. E.g. calls notifications.

The purpose for a button allows the notification server to style the button specially and know the purpose of the button.

Let applications query supported options for category and button purpose.

jsparber · 2024-06-06T11:26:44Z

@sdroege can you have a look at the sound validator in cbcd589

Mikenux mentioned this pull request Mar 8, 2024

Notifications Portal v2 proposal #983

Open

jsparber changed the title ~~Implement v2 notification spec~~ Start to implement v2 notification spec Mar 9, 2024

jsparber force-pushed the implement_v2_notification_spec branch from eae298c to 6cb0d0b Compare March 22, 2024 17:28

ilya-fedin reviewed Mar 22, 2024

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jsparber force-pushed the implement_v2_notification_spec branch 2 times, most recently from 1c893d7 to 9c11013 Compare March 26, 2024 17:08

ilya-fedin mentioned this pull request Mar 30, 2024

Add an option to display notification content even if screen is locked telegramdesktop/tdesktop#27666

Open

bertob reviewed Apr 3, 2024

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data/org.freedesktop.portal.Notification.xml Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

jsparber added 9 commits April 4, 2024 21:35

tests/notification: Check result in notification add callback

6e2f90a

Adding a notification may fail, instead of waiting for the timeout we can check the result we get in the callback.

tests/notification: Remove redundant code

13f78fa

We can reuse most of the test setup for all tests. This will make it easier to test more properties.

test: Implement tests for notification icons

0dcec82

icon-validator: Allow custom path for icon validator via env

a16aee0

This allows setting a custom path for the icon validator, especially useful when testing without installing.

utils: Print error log when icon-validator fails to validate a image

3482e33

CI: Fix running icon-validator

a66d939

The sandbox for the icon-validator needs a privileged container. And it needs librsvg to be able to validate SVGs.

validate-icon: Don't log command ever

e66041b

If debug messages are turned on the output of validate-icon isn't a valid key file since it contains log output as well.

jsparber force-pushed the implement_v2_notification_spec branch from 9c11013 to 60db472 Compare April 5, 2024 17:59

jsparber force-pushed the implement_v2_notification_spec branch 8 times, most recently from 5705ffc to 049806c Compare April 16, 2024 11:14