Enotify: a networked notification system for emacs

Enotify provides some sort of system tray for emacs.

It is born as a vehicle for TDD notifications, as the writer does not like annoying popups floating around his tiled workspace.

An application can connect to enotify and send a notification message, that will discreetly appear in the emacs mode-line.

INSTALLATION

If you are updating from an old version, please check the INCOMPATIBLE-CHANGES file for possible breakages.

Get the code, add the enotify directory to your emacs load-path and require enotify:

	(add-to-list 'load-path "path/to/enotify")
    (require 'enotify)
    (enotify-minor-mode t)

If you customized the port number related variables (namely enotify-port, enotify-use-next-available-port, enotify-fallback-ports), ensure that the form (enotify-minor-mode t) gets evaluated /after/ your customizations, or else your changes won't affect enotify's startup.

USAGE

Enotify uses the TCP port 5000 by default. You can customize `enotify-default-port' if you want. The variable enotify-use-next-available-port contains a list of ports to be used as a fallback when binding enotify-default-port fails.

It is also possible to instruct enotify to try increasing port numbers (starting from enotify-default-port or the last port specified in enotify-fallback-ports if this s available) for a fixed number of times or indefinately until port 65535. This is done throug the custom variable enotify-use-next-available-port.

The function enotify-port sends a message that displays what port enotify is currently running on.

Messages are sent as strings and have this format:

---

|<message size>|<message body>

---

Message bodies have the form of a keyword argument list, like

	(:register "MySlotID")

The message size is intended as the length in characters of the message body.

Enotify slots

An application that wants to send notifications should register a slot

• the equivalent of an icon in a system tray - before sending any notification message.

The message used to register a slot

	(:register <slot-name> :handler-fn <message-data-processing-funcion>)

The function passed as :handler-fn is of the form

	(handler-fn slot-id data)

whose purpose of the :handler-fn parameter will be clarified in the following section.

Notifications

The message used to send a notification has the form

	(:id <slot-name>
	 :notification (:text <slot text>
	                :face <slot face>
			:help <tooltip text>
			:mouse-1 <mouse-1 handler>)
	 :data <additional-data>)

• data: it will be passed to the handler function specified in the slot registration message

• text: the text to be displayed in the notification area

• face: the face used to display the text in the notification area

• help: tooltip text on mouse-over

• mouse-1: an (iteractive "e") handler function of the form

       ----
    	(m1-handler event)
       ----
  
       It's possible to retrieve the slot id with
  
       ----
    	(enotify-event->slot-id event)
       ----
  

Ruby/Rails/Rspec/Watchr TDD application

As of now, laynor/spectator-emacs is the only application for enotify. If you are interested, you can look at the code and see how it works.

It's best used together with Rspec Org Formatter, that provides org-mode formatted text for rspec results.