Bug 316920 - add possibility to open chat windows automatically
Summary: add possibility to open chat windows automatically
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Alias: None
Product: telepathy
Classification: Unmaintained
Component: text-ui (show other bugs)
Version: 0.5.80
Platform: openSUSE Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: Future
Assignee: Telepathy Bugs
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-03-17 16:47 UTC by Silver Salonen
Modified: 2024-09-18 18:14 UTC (History)
9 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
kde: Decision-Required+


Attachments
Open Automatically Patch (1.73 KB, patch)
2013-04-01 09:51 UTC, David Edmundson
Details

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Description Silver Salonen 2013-03-17 16:47:29 UTC
I'd love my chat windows to be opened automatically, not them being queued up in system tray. Please add a setting for that.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Chat is started by a contact
Actual Results:  
System tray shows notification about the chat

Expected Results:  
Chat window is opened automatically. It would be also nice if there would be an option to choose whether the window should be opened as minimized.
Comment 1 David Edmundson 2013-03-17 18:18:06 UTC
I think we (as a team) need to have a discussion on this.  It's come up before.

Flagged that it needs discussion next meeting, I don't want to see any patches on this till we've done that.  Simply skipping the approver whilst solving this bug reports brings in a whole new set of problems.
Comment 2 David Edmundson 2013-03-31 18:46:51 UTC
The issue presumably is that you sometimes miss the status notifier in the corner, which is why you want this feature.

Discussion Time:

Lets say this did open automatically open, would a new entry in the tasbar be any easier to spot? 

What if you already had the text-ui open chatting to Person A, minimised it, and then Person B messages you? You won't notice until you talk to Person A again.  
Even worse if it's now removed from the notification area (which currently would happen, fixing that would mean showing a notification for any unread messages not unopened conversations)

How do we deal with different virtual desktops or activities?

The chat plasmoid is meant to resolve this, what if we just added that by default?

I want to fix the root of the problem, not add options that possibly fix it for some people.
Comment 3 Roman 2013-03-31 19:02:04 UTC
> What if you already had the text-ui open chatting to Person A, minimised it, and then Person B messages you? You won't notice until you talk to Person A again.  
Window state can be observed, and tray icon or notification can be emerged if message is arrived to the invisible window. If user wants to have notifications of incoming conversations, one ought to use System Notifications infrastructure, not self-written tray icons. Keep it simple. 

> Even worse if it's now removed from the notification area (which currently would happen, fixing that would mean showing a notification for any unread messages not unopened conversations)
Adding separate notifications for unread messages and new conversations is a solution.

> How do we deal with different virtual desktops or activities?
What KDE applications design guidelines say about that? If notifications are transferable between desktops/activities, let it be so. If not, they are not designed for that situations and should not be used. I'm not sure about all that activities stuff, someone could find a better solution. 

> The chat plasmoid is meant to resolve this, what if we just added that by default?
Add what? Plasmoid? We'd better not. Plasma panels have not being designed for intensive user-desktop interactions, many plasma themes make your plasmoids look weird. Plasmoid might be a choice, but we must not force users to use this.
Comment 4 David Edmundson 2013-03-31 19:05:00 UTC
> not self-written tray icons. Keep it simple. 

This "self-written tray icon" is a Status Notifier Item part of the well defined cross-desktop spec for persistent notifications. http://api.kde.org/4.x-api/kdelibs-apidocs/kdeui/html/classKStatusNotifierItem.html
Comment 5 Roman 2013-03-31 19:23:43 UTC
David, in spite of your rightfulness, this is not the major part of my proposition.
Comment 6 Silver Salonen 2013-04-01 07:45:15 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> The issue presumably is that you sometimes miss the status notifier in the
> corner, which is why you want this feature.

Another point may be that I may want to open the chat window not inactively on the taskbar, but maybe right in front of me. This should be an option too.

> Discussion Time:
> 
> Lets say this did open automatically open, would a new entry in the tasbar
> be any easier to spot? 

Yes.

> What if you already had the text-ui open chatting to Person A, minimised it,
> and then Person B messages you? You won't notice until you talk to Person A
> again.  

This is why I like every chat to have a separate window (like it is in 0.5.80git).

> Even worse if it's now removed from the notification area (which currently
> would happen, fixing that would mean showing a notification for any unread
> messages not unopened conversations)

Like Roman said, system notifications :)

> How do we deal with different virtual desktops or activities?

I'd prefere new chat windows to be opened in a current desktop/activity.

> The chat plasmoid is meant to resolve this, what if we just added that by
> default?

I haven't used it yet, but if I understand the idea correctly, I don't like the idea of having to use a plasmoid for my active tasks (I'd assume switching to a plasmoid is not as fast as switching to a separate windows, but as I said, I've not used the plasmoid yet).
Comment 7 David Edmundson 2013-04-01 09:51:09 UTC
Created attachment 78536 [details]
Open Automatically Patch

Proposed patch to automatically open new chats. 
(you may need to restart mission-control-5 after applying, I seemed to need to)

It does not have any "start minimised" code in there.

I'd like some devs to try this for a few weeks and reply back with comments after some real world usage.
Comment 8 Dominik Cermak 2013-04-01 16:23:49 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> Created attachment 78536 [details]
> Open Automatically Patch
> 
> Proposed patch to automatically open new chats. 
> (you may need to restart mission-control-5 after applying, I seemed to need
> to)

With this patch I shouldn't get the envelope in the tray, but the text-ui window directly, right?
It doesn't do this here, I still get the envelope and have to click on it.

I applied the patch, make clean && make the text-ui and logged out of my KDE session (so mission-control is restarted). Am I doing something wrong?
Comment 9 Tomasz Kalkosiński 2013-12-05 08:48:19 UTC
What is the status of this issue? I second this proposition, I miss this feature a lot.
Comment 10 Martin Klapetek 2013-12-05 10:35:20 UTC
Sorry, our focus is currently in the underlying libs, which we need to have working flawlessly, so we're not working on any new UI features right now.

However if someone wants to take this on and will provide a patch (even based on David's from comment #7), we will happily review it and if good, merge it in.
Comment 11 David Edmundson 2013-12-05 10:46:20 UTC
I need feedback on someone using the patch in comment #7 for an extended period of time and to answer all my questions in comment #2.

I'm not merging anything till that happens.
Comment 12 Martin Klapetek 2013-12-05 10:53:13 UTC
Note that answers are in comments #3 and #6.
Comment 13 David Edmundson 2013-12-05 11:13:12 UTC
Well they're not answers from people actually running a version that opens things automatically. It's just speculations, which isn't very useful.

What I meant is I want someone coming up with a patch to run it for a while and address each of my concerns in comment #2 which are problems I had whilst running with this option.
Comment 14 Tomasz Kalkosiński 2013-12-16 11:37:33 UTC
David, I understand your point but you won't satisfy everyone. The point of this issue is actually to "fix it for some people". In my opinion, open instantly all chats is pretty basic functionality of IM clients. System tray is easier to spot for me. I've missed some conversation with telepathy already, beacuse white envelope looks exactly like KMail's icon and I hate bubbles so I've turned them off.

Previously I used Kopete and I was happy with configuration options. I've found documentation here: http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdenetwork/kopete/configure-dialog.html . You can see some options here and you can configure "open instanty", "flash system tray" etc. as you wish.
Comment 15 Martin Klapetek 2014-01-03 15:29:52 UTC
I've been running the patch from comment #7 for couple weeks now. 

Tl;dr - it's horrible.

Longer version - It is horrible. I've successfully missed /lots/ of messages. Basically new chats open in already opened chat window, but they don't blink in the taskbar. Now I'm not sure if it's our fault for not setting the proper flag or if Plasma is being weird and stops the blinking after couple blinks (which is the case with icon tasks I think); anyways, the new messages are super easy to miss.

So unless the taskbar entry is blinking like crazy (or, as bug 328687 suggests, a systray icon is blinking like crazy), this patch does more bad than good.
Comment 16 Daniele Scasciafratte 2014-05-09 12:39:49 UTC
any news about this?
i want the auto open of the chat window when a new person chat with me.
Comment 17 David Edmundson 2014-05-09 13:58:38 UTC
See comment #15. It explains the state well.
We have tried it but it turns out making it open automatically sucks. We're not going to add something that sucks based on the opinions of people who haven't tried using it.

Clearly we need to improve some other things (maybe show a StatusNotifierItem on all unread messages?) in order to achieve this properly, but I don't know what.
Comment 18 Janet 2014-06-27 16:26:20 UTC
(In reply to comment #15)
> I've been running the patch from comment #7 for couple weeks now. 
> 
> Tl;dr - it's horrible.
> 
> Longer version - It is horrible. I've successfully missed /lots/ of
> messages. Basically new chats open in already opened chat window, but they
> don't blink in the taskbar. Now I'm not sure if it's our fault for not
> setting the proper flag or if Plasma is being weird and stops the blinking
> after couple blinks (which is the case with icon tasks I think); anyways,
> the new messages are super easy to miss.
> 
> So unless the taskbar entry is blinking like crazy (or, as bug 328687
> suggests, a systray icon is blinking like crazy), this patch does more bad
> than good.

I work in a job full of distractions. I drop what I'm doing at a moment's notice to take phone calls. The little envelope that appears in my list of contacts is just not going to cut it (and I don't have speakers, so sound alerts aren't going to help, even if I didn't have to keep the volume down because of the phone calls). 

Here's something it seems wasn't considered in the trial of the horrible patch. I have it set up so all my chats open in separate windows. I realize that's a horrible, annoying choice to some (my IT guy looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy), but it helps me spacially organize and differentiate between conversations so I don't type the wrong thing to the wrong person. Personalization is the name of the game, right?

Currently, I'm not "missing" any messages, as I eventually see the little envelope. But often, it's twenty minutes or an hour after the message is relevant. Whereas a chat window popping up in my face demands attention, and will still be there when I hang up the phone.

I've been assured by my IT team that this IM system is better than what we used before. But I'm not seeing an "automatically open my conversations" option, so I'm not convinced!

Can someone instruct me how to use the horrible patch? It sounds like just what I need!

Thanks!
-j.
Comment 19 Christoph Cullmann 2024-09-18 18:14:40 UTC
Dear user, unfortunately Telepathy is no longer maintained.

Please migrate to another solution, e.g. for Jabber a possibility is Kaidan, for Matrix a candidate is NeoChat.