Re: notifications for todo items

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

=?utf-8?Q?Peter_M=C3=BCnster?= <pmlists@free.fr> wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 23 2012, Nick Dokos wrote:
> 
> > what does this do that appt.el (and its org interface) does not?
> 
> Sorry, I've totally forgotten to write about my motivation, to create
> such an org-notify module.
> 
> Here a summary:
> - different warning periods for different todo-types
> - fine grained warning periods (smallest unit is second)
> - continue notifications, when deadline is overdue
> - easy modification of timestamps (just one click, to say
>   "let's do it tomorrow")
> - switch from "todo" to "done" by clicking on the notification window
> - configurable notification types (email, notifications-notify, beep,
>   etc.)
> - configurable notification period
> - configurable notification duration
> - crescendo notifications (be more aggressive, when time gets closer to
>   deadline)
> 
> There was a little thread about this subject:
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/48832
> 
> 
> Example usage:
>   (org-notify-add 'appt
>                   '(:time "-1s" :period "20s" :duration 10
>                     :actions (org-notify-action-message
>                               org-notify-action-ding))
>                   '(:time "15m" :period "2m" :duration 100
>                     :actions org-notify-action-notify)
>                   '(:time "2h" :period "5m"
>                     :actions org-notify-action-message)
>                   '(:time "1d" :actions org-notify-action-email))
> 
> This means for todo-items with `notify' property set to `appt': 1 day before
> deadline, send a reminder-email, 2 hours before deadline, start to send
> messages every 5 minutes, then, 15 minutes before deadline, start to pop up
> notification windows every 2 minutes. The timeout of the window is set to
> 100 seconds. Finally, when deadline is overdue, send messages and make
> noise.
> 

A quick first impression: orgntf-process seems expensive. It seems
to take 100% of one core (I've got a quad-core processor) for three or
four seconds every fifty seconds. Unfortunately, the core is the same one
that's running emacs, so emacs stops responding for those three or four
seconds. I have disabled org-notify for now.

Nick