regression vs. notification-daemon: positioning when multiple screens are available

That's known and on the ToDo list

seems to be triaged https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/notify-osd/+bug/331369/comments/1.
Setting importance to medium as it "only" affects twinview setups. Micro, maybe give a quick evaluation to attract drive-by contributions?

See also duplicate 332986 which stresses the point that the secondary screen may be *much* less visible than the primary.

This also affects multiple X screens.

1. Notification always appears on screen 0.
2. When focus is on screen 1+, the notification 'flashes' briefly (1/10th second) on screen 0.
3. When focus is on screen 0, the notification appears. If the focus is moved to another screen the notification disappears. If focus returns to screen 0 notification re-appears (all within the overall notification time-out).

A related issue is that when running multiple X-screens applications are 'associated' with the specific screen (both by the user and the system). Therefore there is a high user expectation that if (say) Evolution or Firefox are running on screen 1+ the notification or alert should appear on that screen.

This is especially important since multiple X screens may well be running in physically different locations (e.g. different rooms).

Confirmed here. The simple fix would be to make the notifications appear on the screen that the panel is on. The more difficult fix would be to make the notification appear on the screen that the application it effects is on, but default to the screen that the panel is on otherwise.

"Setting importance to medium as it "only" affects twinview setups."
No, it affects me too. I use the radeon driver and randr.

Is there currently a workaround?
A way to position the location manually?

It took me a while to figure out why I didn't see any notifications by default. My right monitor is smaller and has a lesser resolution, so the top-right of the combined viewport isn't visible. Hence, I saw no notifications at all.

Is there some place to configure the location? I would rather have them start at the bottom-left of the viewport.

PS. A proper fix would be to:
 - either show notifications on both screens (ignoring the combined viewport)
 - show on the primary screen (hence the word 'primary')
 - have a way to configure where to show the notification (perhaps some people prefer it to be in the center or the left of the screen?). The current choice (top right) assumes a lot of things about how a desktop is setup. My least used-place on the screen is the bottom-left. But that's just MY setup. Perhaps a place in gconf where the power users can configure this stuff?

This bug was fixed in the package notify-osd - 0.9.7-0ubuntu1

---------------
notify-osd (0.9.7-0ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * New upstream version:
    - added and improved multihead support,
      notifications stick to panel whatever the monitor it is on (lp: #331369)
    - crashers fixes (lp: #331927, #349133)
    - enable the icon lookup fallback mechanism for fallback icons like
      notification-display-brightness-* (lp: #344385)
    - reworked parts of notify-osd in order to make it adapt dynamically to
      changes of font-face, font-size and dpi (lp: #339731)
    - ensure X errors will not kill notify-osd
    - use HTML- and markup-filter for title- and body-message-text also
      in fallback-dialog
  * debian/patches/correct_service_install.patch:
    - correctly install the dbus service
  * debian/rules:
    - use simple-patchsys rules

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:45:12 +0100

"Fix Released"? More like "Bug Released"

Yeah, I'm in the other camp. I have two screens. They're identical and right next to each other. My display is like one 3840x1200px sheet of beauty...

Notifications, with the exception of a few hiccoughs, have been perfect *for me* pretty much since they were implemented.

Needless to say, I'm less than happy with the "fix". People have suggested various fixes but there is only one that will make people happy: let us decide. Store something in gconf. Add a tab to the Appearance Preferences screen.

Erk.. Forgot to mention (though it's fairly obvious implicitly) that I like my notifs on the secondary (right) screen.

Were these fixes supposed to work for TwinView setups as well? Using 0.9.9-0ubuntu1 with TwinView. Right-hand monitor is set as primary, and I only have a single panel on the top of that right-hand screen. Notifications are displaying on the top-right corner of the left monitor.

I'll set back to Confirmed as per Nick's comment. Since the twinview bug #344582 was duped to this, it should work on twinview as well, or that bug should be unduped.

Hi,

The behavior implemented as of 0.9.8 is to attach the notification to the panel, next to the status indicators. It seemed to be the most familiar and consistent default position for notifications.

If the panel spans the two screens, then notifications are displayed on the monitor on the right, along with other system indicators. If the panel is only on one screen, because you have then arranged on top of each other, then you will see the notifications on the top screen. If however, the panel is located at the bottom of one or both of your screens, then notifications will still be displayed at the top of the screen, and on the top right of the workarea.

If you are using a language that displays in right-to-left order, then the notifications should appear on the right corner as well.

Considering that multihead support is generally a setup for advanced users, we've also added a gconf key to enable a smarter mode. To enable it, you need to set "/apps/notify-osd/multihead_mode" to "focus-follow".

In this mode, the notifications will be displayed on the screen that contains the active window, and if none exists (if ever that can happen), then it will be displayed on the monitor that contains the mouse pointer.

Note that we only support multihead with RANDR, ie with a single X screen spanning multiple monitors, ie what most people use nowadays. Of course, we'll try to had support for multiple X screens soon, and also welcome patches for that.

Oli, Nick, Michael, can you confirm that the latest version behaves as defined above.

I hope the advanced mode can be useful for you too. If you have other configuration ideas, let's discuss that as another bug (wishlist), as this one is about a regression vs n-d, and i think we're already doing better here. Please subscribe me to the new bug report as well.

Thanks,
David

David Barth schrieb:

> Considering that multihead support is generally a setup for advanced
> users, we've also added a gconf key to enable a smarter mode. To enable
> it, you need to set "/apps/notify-osd/multihead_mode" to "focus-follow".

@David Barth, how can i edit this key? I tryed to use gconf-editor but
there is no such key. Should i create it?

I'm not sure it does behave like that here. I'll let you know how I'm set up
and you can decide if it's how it's supposed to work... All I know is it's
not how I'd like it.

I'm using twinview. I believe that's a single X screen. I have two panels:

   1. At the bottom of my primary screen (left), containing the menu and a
   window list
   2. At the bottom of my secondary screen (right), containing a window
   list, notification area, clock, user switch applet and a couple of other
   little applets

Notifications currently show on the top-right of my primary screen.
I want them hugging the notification area: bottom-right of my secondary
screen.

I tried to enable follow but it hasn't worked without a restart (it may work
when I do restart) but I think it'll be too disorientating. I'd rather the
notifications just happened in one place.

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 9:27 AM, David Barth <email address hidden>wrote:

> Oli, Nick, Michael, can you confirm that the latest version behaves as
> defined above.
>
> I hope the advanced mode can be useful for you too. If you have other
> configuration ideas, let's discuss that as another bug (wishlist), as
> this one is about a regression vs n-d, and i think we're already doing
> better here. Please subscribe me to the new bug report as well.
>
> Thanks,
> David
>
> --
> regression vs. notification-daemon: positioning when multiple screens are
> available
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/331369
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

fishor wrote:
> @David Barth, how can i edit this key? I tryed to use gconf-editor but
> there is no such key. Should i create it?
>
Yes, please do create the key.

@David. gconf-editor do not have create function. I tryed per command
line but it not working for me too:
gconftool-2 -s -t string /apps/notify-osd/multihead_mode focus-follow

David Barth wrote:
> The behavior implemented as of 0.9.8 is to attach the notification
> to the panel, next to the status indicators. It seemed to be the
> most familiar and consistent default position for notifications.

Personally, I'm happy for it to be like that - it's just not working that way that the moment :)

> If the panel spans the two screens, then notifications are displayed
> on the monitor on the right, along with other system indicators. If the
> panel is only on one screen, because you have then arranged on top
> of each other, then you will see the notifications on the top screen.

Panel is restricted to my primary monitor only which is on the right. If you view the attachment, apart from being in complete awe of my art skills, you can see a mock-up of what my screen setup is.

> Note that we only support multihead with RANDR, ie with a single X
> screen spanning multiple monitors, ie what most people use nowadays.
> Of course, we'll try to had support for multiple X screens soon, and also
> welcome patches for that.

TwinView only uses a single X server - it multiplexes the screens together but at the same time gives the window manager hints, for example, that maximising a window should only fill one screen. If you look at Oli's last comment above, you'll see that he is also using TwinView, his notifications are also showing on the left monitor, but unlike me his left monitor is also his primary monitor. I have not looked at the positioning code for the notifications (it's getting late here), but it is possible that the positioning code is always detecting the right-hand side of the left hand monitor as the position to be, regardless of what TwinView sets as the primary/second monitors. This same problem occurs with AWN, and up until recently with Gnome-Do.

I've the same problem: the notifications appear on my second (smaller) monitor which is left of my first (bigger) monitor.
My monitor layout matches Nick's drawing but I use the radeon Xorg driver.

Fixed the advanced "focus-follow" mode gconf check too. I will request an exception to try to land that in 9.04 final.
Meanwhile, you can check out the code of notify-osd at: https://code.launchpad.net/~notify-osd-developers/notify-osd/main

> The behavior implemented as of 0.9.8 is to attach the notification
> to the panel, next to the status indicators. It seemed to be the
> most familiar and consistent default position for notifications.

@David
this is certainly not apparant in 0.9.11-0ubuntu1 on my setup. I, like others in this thread, have a single panel at the bottom of the screen but notifications appear top right. With a 24" 1920x1200 setup, I rarely see them.

The focus-follow fix would be an improvement (any news on when that might land?) but a configurable location would still be infinitely preferable. Bug 346095 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/notify-osd/+bug/346095) shows some of the strength of feeling about this kind of thing. It doesn't appear to be a dupe of this, but probably should be.

Cheers,
Darren.

I have 2 screens using nvidia twinview with left (primary, 17" LCD, 1280x1024) and significantly larger right (21" CRT, 2048x1536) monitors. The left screen contains the two standard panels and usually firefox (and evolution if it's workings :P). Right screen usually idles in IRC on Pidgin and plays music with Banshee.

When I first switched to Jaunty, having the notifications show up on the right of the right screen somewhere near the middle was a slight annoyance. It's twice the height of my primary, so the notifications would show up near where the top of the left screen is...about 1024 pixels high. If a song changed, I had to turn my head to what was playing in banshee instead of getting the libnotify popup under my clock and over firefox. Same goes for buddies logging in and out of pidgin.

This problem was fixed a couple of weeks ago, but has since regressed to its original behavior.

Upgraded today to 0.9.11-0ubuntu1. Firstly, my previous issue is now fixed, sort of - the notifications show up on the top-right of my primary monitor (on the right-hand side) next to the clock/indicator/FUSA. This is all great and can be seen in the attached "correct.png".

To test that the notifications really are connected to the clock/indicator/FUSA applets, I added a new panel on my secondary monitor and moved those applets to there. The notifications would then correctly appear on my second monitor. I then moved the applets back to the original panel on the primary screen and left the new panel on the second screen, only to find that notifications would still appear on this second screen. Removing the new panel has the notifications correctly appear on the primary monitor. To confirm it was not using the applets for placement, I simply added the new panel to the second monitor again, no applets, and the notification would appear there. See "incorrect.png" attached in the next comment.

Additional attachment for the previous comment.

For the record, this issue is no longer a problem for me as I only have the one panel on the primary monitor, but it is probably still be a problem for others.

@Darren: notifications are always shown at the top of the screen as a design recommendation; if the panel is at the bottom, they still appear at the top of the screen

@Ryan: i don't think there was a regression recently here; we had some initial try some weeks ago at positioning the notifications not directly at the top, but the resulting gap was disturbing for most users

@Nick: notify-osd looks for either the a gnome-panel at the top or the standard WORKAREA if no top gnome-panel can be detected; we don't strictly try to detect where the status icons are because they may be distributed over multiple panels and not necessarily in the order we would expect them to be to be able to decide where to actually display notifications. Instead we chose to attach them to the right side of the top panel (or the left side if your using a RTL language)

Freeze exception request.

Description of the proposed changes:

The change is about fixing a bug where the advanced multi-head configuration mode was not working.

Rationale for the exception:

What this mode should do is allow people with multiple monitors to (optionally) see notifications being displayed on the monitor that contains the active window, as opposed to seeing them always on the monitor that contains the top gnome-panel (this is the default behavior).

With this change, we would like to fix the last remaining high priority bug for notify-osd, and a potential regression vs notification-daemon at the same time.

We feel the change is safe in that:
 * it is a 1 line patch for fixing a bug
 * it does activate a code path with no error cases forks, nor any other object lifecycle issues (potential leaks)
 * it does not trigger any additional (potentially untested) queries to external sub-systems like gconf; that was already the case before the fix

Additional information:

The fix has been integrated in a new tarball (notify-osd-0.9.12) that contains this fix:

=== modified file 'src/defaults.c'
--- src/defaults.c 2009-04-03 22:00:34 +0000
+++ src/defaults.c 2009-04-10 09:54:05 +0000
@@ -2072,7 +2072,7 @@
          &error);
  if (mode_str != NULL)
  {
- if (g_strcmp0 (mode_str, "focus-follow"))
+ if (! g_strcmp0 (mode_str, "focus-follow"))
    mode = TRUE;
  } else if (error != NULL)
   g_warning ("error getting multihead mode: %s\n",

David: but for some reason, several weeks ago the notification moved from my
secondary monitor, to my primary (which has the panels). Then just 2 days
ago it's moved back to the middle of my secondary monitor.

Again, I'm using nvidia TwinView with different sized monitors and RANDR
does not run with this configuration.

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:23 PM, David Barth <email address hidden>wrote:

> @Darren: notifications are always shown at the top of the screen as a
> design recommendation; if the panel is at the bottom, they still appear
> at the top of the screen
>
> @Ryan: i don't think there was a regression recently here; we had some
> initial try some weeks ago at positioning the notifications not directly
> at the top, but the resulting gap was disturbing for most users
>
> @Nick: notify-osd looks for either the a gnome-panel at the top or the
> standard WORKAREA if no top gnome-panel can be detected; we don't
> strictly try to detect where the status icons are because they may be
> distributed over multiple panels and not necessarily in the order we
> would expect them to be to be able to decide where to actually display
> notifications. Instead we chose to attach them to the right side of the
> top panel (or the left side if your using a RTL language)
>
> --
> regression vs. notification-daemon: positioning when multiple screens are
> available
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/331369
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

I test-pulled from trunk, and it has a whole lot of other changes. So should I just cherrypick that patch then?

For the cherry-picking, you're after rev 293, pitti.

I uploaded this patch yesterday, waiting in the queue.

This bug was fixed in the package notify-osd - 0.9.11-0ubuntu3

---------------
notify-osd (0.9.11-0ubuntu3) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Correctly check for multihead_mode, to make bubbles always appear on the
    primary screen. Cherrypicked from trunk. (LP: #331369)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:25:20 +0200

I still have the problem with twinview with the latest update.
I have a primary LCD monitor and a second LCD TV for watching movies.
All the notifications are displayed on the TV which isn't in the same room :p

I've also tried : gconftool-2 -s -t string /apps/notify-osd/multihead_mode focus-follow..but with no success so far...

Isn't there a way to make sure that the notification isn't appearing outside the visible area of the screen? When I maximize a window on my monitor with the smaller vertical resolution the windows don't go out of the visible area, so something must be aware of the true monitor size. Why can't notify-osd display top-right of the true monitor size?

I still have this problem with 0.9.11-0ubuntu3 on a TwinView setup. Here's the output of notify-osd:

** (notify-osd:6226): DEBUG: selecting monitor 0 at (0,0) - 1920x1200
** (notify-osd:6226): DEBUG: no panel detetected; using workarea fallback
** (notify-osd:6226): DEBUG: top corner at: 3550, -2

The full area is 3840x1200 and the OSD is placed just short of the far right on the second monitor. It does detect the right monitor at first; there seems to be some incorrect logic after that.

As per the other testers above, this bug is still not fixed.

I can't confirm it. After update yesterday, notification appears on the
active monitor. Exactly how it suppose to be.

I mentioned this in another bug thread, but I believe this is the more appropriate one.
I use randr to do multiple displays stacked vertically (to stay within my poor graphics card's limit of 2048x2048 for 3d acceleration). The primary display is my LCD screen, and the secondary display (placed above the primary) is a TV across the room for watching movies.

My gnome panel is at the bottom of my primary screen, but with the secondary screen active, the notifications appear... well... nowhere (I assume they are being positioned at the top right of my virtual screen (outside the viewable area).

I'm using nvidia twinview, a 1680x1050 on the left, and 1280x1024 on the right.
No matter the position I select in Pop-up Notifications dialog, the pop ups are always in the top right of the left monitor.

I only WISH mine would show up on the top right of the left (primary)
monitor. :(

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Matt Joiner <email address hidden> wrote:

> I'm using nvidia twinview, a 1680x1050 on the left, and 1280x1024 on the
> right.
> No matter the position I select in Pop-up Notifications dialog, the pop ups
> are always in the top right of the left monitor.
>
> --
> regression vs. notification-daemon: positioning when multiple screens are
> available
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/331369
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

I've taken some time to investigate this properly.

This problem will arise on an NVIDIA TwinView configuration when there is no GNOME panel at the top of the screen; either through being removed or moved elsewhere. notify-osd is programmed to follow the top panel only, quite explicitly and I believe this design was intentional. The fallback path attempts to place the OSD at the top-right of the desktop area - which spans all monitors in a TwinView configuration and hence appears on the rightmost monitor.

I am not sure what the correct solution is. I have made a private patch to fix this on my system but it is not suitable for wider release.

but the notify area is *NOT* under my gnome panel. It's on the wrong
screen, which twinview *DOES* recognize as a separate monitor. I
specifically gave up special effects/randr to have two separate monitors.

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 4:44 PM, jcornwall <email address hidden> wrote:

> I've taken some time to investigate this properly.
>
> This problem will arise on an NVIDIA TwinView configuration when there
> is no GNOME panel at the top of the screen; either through being removed
> or moved elsewhere. notify-osd is programmed to follow the top panel
> only, quite explicitly and I believe this design was intentional. The
> fallback path attempts to place the OSD at the top-right of the desktop
> area - which spans all monitors in a TwinView configuration and hence
> appears on the rightmost monitor.
>
> I am not sure what the correct solution is. I have made a private patch
> to fix this on my system but it is not suitable for wider release.
>
> --
> regression vs. notification-daemon: positioning when multiple screens are
> available
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/331369
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

(IMO) it should track the notification area.

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:44 PM, jcornwall <email address hidden> wrote:

> I've taken some time to investigate this properly.
>
> This problem will arise on an NVIDIA TwinView configuration when there
> is no GNOME panel at the top of the screen; either through being removed
> or moved elsewhere. notify-osd is programmed to follow the top panel
> only, quite explicitly and I believe this design was intentional. The
> fallback path attempts to place the OSD at the top-right of the desktop
> area - which spans all monitors in a TwinView configuration and hence
> appears on the rightmost monitor.
>
> I am not sure what the correct solution is. I have made a private patch
> to fix this on my system but it is not suitable for wider release.
>
> --
> regression vs. notification-daemon: positioning when multiple screens are
> available
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/331369
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Ryan, my analysis is not incompatible with your problem.

The positioning logic in notify-osd is not very sophisticated and TwinView, which the developers may not have been able to perform substantial testing under, introduces additional complications. One problem, which I described above, will occur if and only if there is no GNOME panel at the top of the screen. As you still have the top panel then you are experiencing a different bug arising from similar logic.

I like your idea, Oli, although I am not sure if there is a reliable way to query the GNOME desktop to locate the notification area. The method for locating just the panel is rather cumbersome, albeit reasonably reliable; each window on the desktop is iterated in an attempt to match one with a specific class name. Perhaps the maintainers can think of a way?

(There are additional structural problems in notify-osd which would need to be resolved to position the OSD at lower parts of the display. e.g. The height of the bubble is not currently known when the positioning logic is invoked, because it is not required when the bubble starts at the top and grows downwards.)

I just want to mention that I have the same positioning issues with xrandr and not twinview.

Previously, with my screens stacked vertically (smaller screen above a larger one), the notifications would appear (I believe) in the top-right corner of the virtual display, which was a non-visible section.

Re-arranging the screens side-by-side 'fixes' things, but at the cost of 3d acceleration (the virtual display is now greater than my card's 2048x2048 limit).

@jcornwall -- perhaps having the bubbles grow upward from the bottom would be simpler than trying to change the positioning logic?

Are there any conf files that can be edited to give a precise location to
notify-osd? Or does anyone know which files I should recompile with the
correct settings?

There are no config files at this time to position notify-osd from what I can see. Looks like its been decided to hardcode in the position to the upper right of the screen.. This is a nightmare when considering we remove the upper panel right away from all new ubuntu installations because users we are switching over from windows want to have something as familiar as possible during their transition.. Its hard enough to get users to switch, and then when we get them to do it, we would like it to be as easy for them as possible. This means notifications down by the system tray in the lower right, and a single panel, and no wasting screen real-estate with a 2nd top panel.

@d2globalinc
Stop to bother people with this. After years with linux i learned one thing: only you responsible for people you converted to linux. Microsoft need you, because you pay money. If you do not pay, microsoft will die. Linux do not need you, but probably you need linux, so make it better. If you need a cheep replacement for windows, you on wrong place here.

In my opinion, this bug is not fixed. I have a multi-monitor setup, with two monitors of different size - primary is 1920x1200 and second is 1280x1024. Both connected to a Nvidia card, using TwinView. They are aligned at the bottom edge, with panels at the bottom.

If I understand this thread correctly, putting the panels at the bottom puts notify-osd in some fallback mode where notifications are displayed top right. This would not be a major problem for me if the notifications were displayed within the visible area. But they are not! Instead they are displayed within the "dead" 1280x176 pixel area above my second screen. So I can't see them at all.

Since I doubt this will be fixed until 9.10, please help all of us who have problems by posting a quick guide how to revert to the old system.

Daniel, if notification bubbles are not appearing in a visible area, please report a bug about that. Commenting in a report for a fixed bug will not get your bug fixed.

Daniel: it does appear that if your panels are at the bottom then the
notifications would display at the top right of your virtual display.
If moving the panel to the top bothers you, can you perhaps move your
larger monitor to the right? Just an idea...

I can now confirm that this bug is fixed for me at least...I switched to
2 X displays with Xinerama. You lose 3D acceleration, but I wasn't
using that anyway.

Thanks Devs!

On Sun, 2009-04-26 at 17:03 +0000, Daniel Hallgren wrote:
> In my opinion, this bug is not fixed. I have a multi-monitor setup, with
> two monitors of different size - primary is 1920x1200 and second is
> 1280x1024. Both connected to a Nvidia card, using TwinView. They are
> aligned at the bottom edge, with panels at the bottom.
>
> If I understand this thread correctly, putting the panels at the bottom
> puts notify-osd in some fallback mode where notifications are displayed
> top right. This would not be a major problem for me if the notifications
> were displayed within the visible area. But they are not! Instead they
> are displayed within the "dead" 1280x176 pixel area above my second
> screen. So I can't see them at all.
>
> Since I doubt this will be fixed until 9.10, please help all of us who
> have problems by posting a quick guide how to revert to the old system.
>

Nevermind...notify-osd has reverted to it's old behavior all on its own now. I was really surprised to see it working this morning. Oh well.

This is driving me absolutely crazy. It's not really the fact that the
notifications are on the wrong screen that's the problem. It's the fact
that they will actually work properly on my primary screen for a little
while and then break.

Unfortunately, switching monitor positions is not really an option for
me.

@Matthew Paul Thomas:

See <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/notify-osd/+bug/367947">bug 367947</a>

And....they're back! I completely removed xorg.conf and remade it with nvidia-settings. I must have messed it up while testing. Again, I'm now using separate X11 screens with Xinerama.

Thanks again!

I'm having the same issues. I'm running Ubuntu 9.04, notify-osd-0.9.11, and nvidia twinview and I cannot for the life of me get my notify-osd to appear anywhere other than the top-right of my right most monitor (Which happens to be the farthest away from me... making notifications almost useless).
I've tried
>gconftool-2 -s -t string /apps/notify-osd/multihead_mode focus-follow
... no luck.

Also it should be noted that I do not have any top panels, nor do I plan on adding any.

Should I try notify-osd-0.9.12? My debug output is almost identical to @jcornwall s first post.

I can confirm that this is not fixed! I've a ATI Radeon 1650SE with the free radeon driver in Xinerama.

I can confirm it's still not fixed using i915 graphics. See attached example.

Me either.

With:
VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)

I have similar issue as Valentin described above (see attachment).

I have also secondary graphic card (nVidia) in my laptop so I will test soon how does it work on the same system.

Still I think that would be the best to let the user decide (config options) or at beginning relate notification popups with notification area on panel.

Simple workaround (for developpers;-))

In a terminal:
# get sources
bzr branch lp:notify-osd
cd notify-osd
./autogen.sh

Open the file src/defaults.c
search the last line of the function "defaults_get_top_corner" (the 2nd last line at all, ~2266)
insert the following code:

 int x_conf = gconf_client_get_int (self->context, "/apps/notification-daemon/x", 0);
 if (x_conf != 0)
 {
  g_debug ("read x: %d", x_conf);
  *x = x_conf;
 }

in the commandline:
cd ..
make (ignor errors if there is the outputfile "src/notify-osd")
# backup original...
sudo mv /usr/lib/notify-osd/notify-osd /usr/lib/notify-osd/notify-osd_old
# copy new version (self compiled)
sudo cp ./src/notify-osd /usr/lib/notify-osd/notify-osd

Now you have to reboot or the kill the notify-osd and restart it...

So, you can now open the gconf-editor, insert a new integer in "/apps/notification-daemon/x" and set it to you prefered x coordinate, where de popups should be show, I choos 900, for a 17" TFT, the first of two...

Andreas

Yeah, Thanx Andreas that works great. I've built a package ,with this patch based on the jaunty package, it can be found in my ppa (https://launchpad.net/~raybuntu/+archive/unstable). But I found a problem. The gconf entry i not set automatically. I had to do a:

gconftool-2 -s /apps/notification-daemon/x --type=int 0

best regards
Ray

Yes, you have to create the new key at your own, that's true.

The coordinate depends on your screen resolution and your preferred position....

Ex. I have 2 17" TFTs, with 1280x1024, i wish to have the notifications on the first screen at the top right corner, so i have to set the x value to 900, because the popups are a bit more than 300px width, and 1280 - 300 = ~900

With the value 0 you have the popups at the top left corner of your screen...

To create the key (how Raybuntu wrote):
gconftool-2 -s /apps/notification-daemon/x --type=int [calculatedValue]

Thank you for building the package! Now it's not only for developers;-)

Andreas

Thanks Andreas B. and Raybuntu! Is there a way to set the OSD to the bottom right corner? or even to appear on both monitors?

I'm not really sure, but I looked at the code, and I think its not possible at the moment.

As I see the new bubble (how a tooltip is called) is always positioned below the others....
(in display.c, function stack_display_position_sync_bubble)

y += bubble_get_future_height (async);
y += EM2PIXELS (defaults_get_bubble_vert_gap (d), d)
     - 2 * EM2PIXELS (defaults_get_bubble_shadow_size (d), d);

you can see, they add always the size, if you change this to "-=" instead of "+=" and if you now change in defaults.c the function defaults_get_top_corner and add at the bottom:
*y = [height of you screen - 200] it may works... But it's a really bad solution!

I haven't read the code at all, and I'm not sure if it's really works... But if you're a developer you may can change it, its open source;-)

If you wish that the popups apear on both monitors I think you have to run two daemons, but this is not possible... (or you have to change a lot in the code...)

Andreas

mfg Andreas

I am using notify-osd 0.9.11-0ubuntu3 and Twinview with a secondary Display to the right.
I can confirm that the bug is not fixed, notify-osd still appears on the top right of the secondary monitor and therefor is useless

Did any one tested latest version from ppa?

https://launchpad.net/~notify-osd-developers/+archive/ppa

I have tested the Notify-OSD developers PPA with Jaunty x64 and it is still broken.

The new upload of notify-osd now centers the notification on the primary screen, which looks fine on my laptop, but unfortunately on my desktop this puts the notification almost smack in the middle of my workspace, so it becomes hard to ignore. This would be fine for "your hard drive is dying" or something but for IMs I've found it to be quite intrusive.

Not sure if this is should be a new bug or not.

Using notify-osd 0.9.22 and finding that it's still displaying on my secondary screen.

I should add that I'm not using gnome-panel, but using XFCE4 and their panel.

After looking into the source for a bit, it seems that my issue is when it doesn't detect any panels (gnome-panel anyway) it defaults to using workarea fallback which completely ignores multi-head focus-folllow and uses the entire desktop size instead of a specific monitor.

I just made changes to the code to make it default to the first monitor (or the focus monitor if defaults_multi_head_focus_follow exists) instead of the entire desktop.

My changes are very specific, though. I don't have a top panel (or any gnome-panels for that matter) AND I'm using multiple screens.

A more elegant solution would be to look into scenarios where no [?top] panel exists in a multi-head environment and having it fall back to focus-follow or even a specified display through gconf.

My Popups seem to be displayed in the non-visible area of my dual monitor setup.

 ___________
| | x <- (I think there is the notification bubble drawn)
| | ___________
| || |
| SEC || PRI |
| || |
 ------------------ ------------------

damn whitespace removed in my ascii art ;)

damn whitespace removed in my ascii art ;)

Similiar setup in Lucid, 24" on the left, 19" secondary monitor on the right - It was working fine in Karmic, but now - all the notification bubbles appear on my secondary monitor (and out of sight!).

I've been unable to find this configuration entry in gconf and this is annoying the hell out of me.

I'm have an ATI card with proprietary drivers, and have an extended desktop (with default screen on the left). Notifications appear in the far right corner of my secondary monitor.

I get almost the same here with nvidia proprietary drivers. The notifications often but not always appear on the secondary monitor and I'm not sure what event causes the switch.

This bug affects me to on Nvidia Twinview. It was working perfectly fine until I moved to a single (bottom) panel set up. Now notifications are on the far right of the right hand monitor... I primarily use the left one so I regularly don't see them.

For me its even worse. I get no notification at all when using two monitors. I think the coordinates are probably off screen. I''m using the nVidia configuration applet to set my screen to twin display with the primary on the right (slightly lower that the larger left hand monitor). I haven't figured out where the notification go yet, but they aren't anywhere that can be seen.

I found my notifications. They're off the screen above the panel. It seems that the notification are showing on the primary monitor but are positioned relative to the height of the secondary monitor. I also should mention that the monitors are both absolutely positioned. They're twin view, absolute positioning on both, with the secondary higher and on the left. There are a lot of possible configurations that have to be consider when choosing the notification position.

Could we use a command like this to set up on which screen we want our bubble to appear on:

gconftool-2 -s /apps/notify-osd/gravity --type=int [screen] [number]

where [screen] is the screen number (0 or 1 in case of TwinView)
where [number] can be:
1 - top-right corner
2 - middle-right
3 - bottom-right corner
4 - bottom-left corner
5 - middle-left
6 - top-left corner

seems gnome-panel is never detected by notify-osd. I just simply apply a patch to disable it resetting monitor rectangle corners to desktop corners to make it work

"gnome-panel is never detected by notify-osd" in last post is for dual monitors. And I've made a simple patch for that, and sent to the authors.

I'm using 10.10, and the notifications were working correctly (showing up in the left monitor - which is my primary monitor as set in the Nvidia control). However when I logged in today, the notifications moved to the right monitor, which is not where they should be. I have no idea what could have caused this to happen.

This is broken again in 11.04 in twinview. It's displaying the notification bubble on the secondary monitor instead of the primary screen where the panel is.

Doesn't appear to be limited to Twinview this time either.

I confirm. It is broken in twinview!

Jaunty reached end-of-life on 23 October 2010. The bug is marked as "confirmed" in later versions of Ubuntu

Not just NVIDIA/TwinView. I have this problem with the current Natty. ATI Radeon 4570HD. Using radeon oss driver. What's weird is that it was working as expected (i.e. notifications on primary monitor, which is my external) just over a week ago.

Is this on the radar to fix with an SRU? As is, my notifications are useless; I have a 24" primary monitor and a 17" secondary monitor. The notifications currently show up on the secondary, which well out of my eyeline when looking at the primary monitor. I set the primary using xrandr is that might be anything to do with it?

Same issue here using opensource drivers for radeon on Natty!

This is similar to the question I posted recently against notify-osd (https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/notify-osd/+question/158709). My situation is 64-bit Natty with Separate X and Xinerama on a NVIDIA Quadro FX 350M. The Top Panel, with all of its icons, is repeated on the second monitor (a gripe in and of itself). Evolution notification pop-ups are on the primary display, but the Top Panel mail icon is colorized in the secondary monitor (less obvious). This in contrast to Evolution alarm notifications for meetings, where the alarm icon is added to the primary monitor as I would expect. It is very confusing to have any notifications applied to the secondary monitor.

Slight modification to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/natty/+source/notify-osd/+bug/331369/comments/93, above. Further evidence thatg raising alerts on the secondary monitor is not helpful to the user is that with Unity-2d running now, the Network Connection, Evolution New Email, etc. are actually popped up on the secondary monitor of this Separate X/Xinerama setup. This is contrary to what I noted above, but further proof that this behavior detracts from the usability of Ubuntu.

What do you think when will be fixed this bug?

This bug affects me too: I am plugging my laptop to an external monitor and i am using the external monitor as the primary screen, but the notifications are still displayed on the laptop screen.

i3 350m laptop with intel hd graphics, definitely not twinview-related.

by setting multihead-mode to "focus-follow" i can get the notifications on the main monitor... why isn't this the default behaviour? However, it seems that notification positioning is wrong: instead of leaving a tiny space from the panel, it leaves a tiny space from the top of the screen, therefore partially obstructing the panel.

Missed the "follow-focus" comment earlier in the discussion so I tried that excitedly but even that doesn't work for me.

multimonitor case will be reviewed for work in next LTS. Closing the regresssion for now, will be tracked independently

After update to 11.10 the focus-follow setting is no longer works. My second display is TV and all notifications is shown on the TV, which is mostly turned off. That's a shame.

It still works incorrect..

Confirmed, problem still occurs on 11.10 (I'm on ATI binary drivers).

Maybe it's somehow related to this one:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/742544?comments=all

In both cases 'primary' flag for monitor is ignored.
Dash goes to most left monitor.
Notifications go to the most right monitor.
With multiple configuration screen no matter how one would connect and set them even scarifying favorite arrangement. Still notifications will be on the other monitor than dash.

That's a true no-go.

sacrificing*

The multihead-mode "focus-follow" fix mentioned earlier DOES work for me, but in Ubuntu11.10 I have to use dconf-editor, not gconf-editor (which is obsolete now, right?).

This makes notifications appear on whichever screen has focus (which is very handy, I've found). It's working for me with twinview configured via nvidia-settings.

Before: notifications always appeared on the right-hand monitor, which was sub-optimal because I'm not usually looking at it.

Fix: "dconf--editor", navigate to apps -> notify-osd, change "multihead-mode" to "focus-follow". No need to log out or restart anything.

Test:
notify-send --icon=gtk-add "Test notification" "This is a test message"

Er, sorry, that "Fix" line should read "dconf-editor", not "dconf--editor".

I can confirm that Max's solution in comment #104 works.

It is still problem on precise, which is the before mentioned LTS.

it should be fixed with 0.9.34 in precise

stgraber@castiana:~$ xrandr --output LVDS1 --primary

Then try to change the sound volume or anything else using notify-osd => still shows on the secondary screen.

My understanding of the fix from 0.9.34-0ubuntu1 is that it avoids displaying notify-osd in a dead zone when in dual-screen mode, it doesn't make it display on the "right" screen.

I didn't read all the comments above, but this fix at the very least doesn't fix the problem described in the bug description.

i am using 11.10 notify-osd 0.9.32-0 and this bug is *NOT* fixed.
Notify osd still pops up at the right Monitor, no matter if its the primary or not.

This bug is still present on Ubuntu 12.04 with a NVIDIA video card. If you know any patch/working around, tell me. I am a bit desperate with this bug.

After updating to 12.04 (from 11.10), i'm hitting this but as well...

I'm using Nvidia Twinview. I've been using it since 11.04 without issues.

One thing I noticed in 12.04, is that screen setup only shows 1 big screen of 2560x1024, instead of 2 screens of 1280x1024 each. It didn't happen before.
BTW, the pannels are on the right screen.

Julian.

I just upgraded to 12.04 and am experiencing this issue with a second monitor as well. The work-around described in comment #104 worked for me as well. There really needs to be a UI for this setting, with an intelligent default. Please re-open this bug until it is fixed. It may have chosen my second monitor because it is larger (higher resolution) than my laptop display. When one is hooked up to a TV as a second monitor, having notifications appear there is almost never desirable.

I have the same error. I have 3 monitors connected, but the information popup is only displayed on the right screen and not on the screen with the most focus. This is really anoying because you are missing a lot of information popups.

Same error here. Laptop with main screen, and a HD television screen hooked up via hdmi cable which I use to watch videos while working. Moving the tv screen from the bottom display to the top display actually fixed the notification problem, but created other problems , with Guake Terminal for instance, which I use frequently while working. The best workaround I've found so far is using the "follow-focus" method as mentioned in comment #104, however this is certainly imperfect as the notifications are now positioned slightly differently from normal which is mildly annoying though temporarily livable. Using the unofficial methods as discussed in this thread (http://askubuntu.com/questions/128474/how-to-customize-on-screen-notifications) to make notifyOSD configurable and then setting the notification positioning from "fixed" to "dynamic" actually gave more normal positioning, but unfortunately also altered the look of the notifications themselves. Perhaps I'm being picky , but I found that even more bothersome and distracting. Currently, notifications as they look and work on normal single screen setup are beautiful and draw the eye enough to do their job, but no more. In other words, nearly perfect. I really hope you will soon address this issue.

For the record, I actually have an AMD A8 'Vision' graphics card, which came with my notebook.

With the workaround of #104 i solved the problem.

Top! Solution #104 works! Now, please make "follow-focus" the default!

Does not work as described (If any windows are open, a bubble should appear...) for me. I am on 12.04 and have not applied the modification mentioned in comment #104.

I don't know about previous releases, but this is NOT fixed for Precise.

Default in dconf-editor /apps/notify-osd/multihead-mode was "dont-focus-follow". Changing to "focus-follow" and logging out and back in, as per comment #104, fixed the issue.

"Fix Released" should mean either default changed to reasonable "focus-follow" or a GUI that allows user to change that for both himself and for other/new users.

#104 worked for me too with 12.04. Thanks! It was driving me nuts

Hi,

12.10 - #104 worked, but it turned on screen mirroring, so i had to turn it off.

I however have another, very simillar issue, which i was searching internet unsuccesfuly. Popus too open on second monitor, why dont they open on the active diplay (where the mouse cursor is)?

For example Emphathy Preferences open on second display. I move it to the first, close it and open again - on second display.

Why?

It's really confusing. Where system decide on which display will new window open?

Thanks and sorry for mixinig two issues.

On 24/10/2012 17:00, Ľubomír Mlích wrote:
>
> I however have another, very simillar issue, which i was searching
> internet unsuccesfuly. Popus too open on second monitor, why dont they
> open on the active diplay (where the mouse cursor is)?

This is unrelated to the current bug, but you can change the "Multi Output Mode"
setting in the "Place Windows" plugin in CompizConfig Settings Manager. "Use
output device with pointer" should do what you're looking for.

--
Kind regards,
Loong Jin

Thanks. On first computer its functional, on second not yet :)

Anyway, my first though was, that these two things must be configured at same place.

I decided to give a try to Unity, in 2013, on LTS (12.04).
And, while fighting to change font size, themes, I found this bug while working with second monitor attached to desktop.
I.e., my configured as primary is the HDMI monitor at left. And the notifications are displayed in the secondary (at right) monitor.
Any patch for Precise? I know there is a dconf workaround. But this is really the Unity way? For anything I want to customize/fix, install a third party program?

Can someone nominate it to Precise too?

Why isn't focus-follow the default? It's an easy way to fix to a very annoying issue.

I am using 13.10 and the notification does not appear on the monitor with the focused window. I this the problem described here?

This still isn't solved for me in Ubuntu 14.04. I have a multi monitor setup using XRandR and notifications appear in weird places in the middle screen. It seems to be related to the resolution of my primary monitor but displayed on other monitors.