[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Maemo Alarm/Notifier Interface

[From: Kimmo Hämäläinen]

On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 14:00, ext Florian Boor wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Devesh Kothari wrote:
> > I am currently looking for what developer requirements would be from
> > such an Alarm/Notifier interface. Specially lot of developers working on
> > applications which need to schedule events and notifications like PIM
> > aplications need this functionality, and it is just not there yet in the
> > Maemo Development Platform.
> 
> This is a feature i really missed porting gpe-calendar. I'm convinced that there
> are some more applications which could need a feature like this.
> The most important reason to introduce a notifier interface is that you can
> easily introduce a battery drain problem with applications doing frequent
> updates/checks. That would have a negative influence on the reputation on the
> 770 and maemo.
> 
> > Some starters
> > 
> > 1. API to
> >    - enable notifier/alarm events
> >    - cancel previously scheduled events
> >    - ability to specify sound file to be played for events [I guess this
> > can be done by the application handling the notifier event, so maybe not
> > relevant]
> 
> I'd keep the interface as simple as possible. Call a function to schedule an
> event and get back an unique id. This is used to identify the event in a
> callback function and to cancel it. Playing sounds should be the job of the
> calling application, it usually needs to do some more action anyway.
> I can imagine that this might be useful for scheduling tasks which are not
> related with user interaction too.

Doesn't Glib has this kind of functionality already?

> 
> > 2. Alarm/Notifier sub system features
> > - ability to schedule multiple notifier alarm event
> > - ability to wake up device on events
> 
> Waking up the device would be important, yes. Another feature to think about

I think the system/HW takes care of wakeups automatically.

> would be to set some command to run (and pass information to) or a dbus service
> to fire if the event time is reached. That would make it possible to have timed
> events without the need to have the calling application running all the time.
> For calendar applications this would be very useful.
> 
> I had some discussion with Kimmo about this topic some time ago. One idea was
> just to use atd. This one would need to become part of the default filesystem
> because we can't start it automatically. In addition to this we would need to
> extend it by some feature to wake up the device.

Instead of atd, we will use cron. So, we don't have an extra daemon in
the system. Alarms > 5min or something should use cron and faster alarms
implemented in the application (or in a library).

> I suggested to extend the libosso time API which currently covers system clock
> changes. Making it a comprehensive interface for time-related tasks would be an
> option if it really fits into the intended purpose of libosso.

Nooooo! :) Isn't Glib+cron enough?

BR; Kimmo

> 
> Greetings
> 
> Florian