Re: UDP notification and icon (was TCP protocol on non OS X platforms.)

[Emmanuel Blot]

> We're getting ready to start working on a platform-independent TCP-
> based Growl protocol. This will happen on the growl-development list,
> once I get a couple more people together on it.

A bit off-topic, but it seems it's not possible to send an
image/icon/etc. embedded into a UDP Growl notification message.
Is it possible? or will you add this feature ?

Thanks,
Manu

[Peter Hosey]

On Jul 24, 2008, at 02:19:26, Emmanuel Blot wrote:
>> We're getting ready to start working on a platform-independent TCP-
>> based Growl protocol. This will happen on the growl-development
>> list, once I get a couple more people together on it.
>
> A bit off-topic, but it seems it's not possible to send an image/
> icon/etc. embedded into a UDP Growl notification message. Is it
> possible?

No.

> or will you add this feature ?

Yes.

[Emmanuel Blot]

>> or will you add this feature ?
>
> Yes.

Great! Will you keep both UDP and TCP protocols?

Any schedule yet?
I mean, is this something that is expected by the end of the year, or
it is a long term feature?

Cheers,
Manu

[Peter Hosey]

On Jul 24, 2008, at 05:51:26, Emmanuel Blot wrote:
> Will you keep both UDP and TCP protocols?

For now. I want the TCP-based protocol to take the place of both of
the current protocols, but we'll want to keep them around for awhile
for compatibility (especially as other notification systems still use
the UDP-based forwarding protocol).

> Any schedule yet?

No.

[Emmanuel Blot]

> For now. I want the TCP-based protocol to take the place of both of
> the current protocols, but we'll want to keep them around for awhile
> for compatibility (especially as other notification systems still use
> the UDP-based forwarding protocol).

Oh ;-(

This would prevent from broadcasting notifications, which can be a
useful feature.
Moreover it will require a more complex implementation on the emitter
side, to deal w/ timing issues. It may be not an issue with
Growl-based implementation, but it will be with simpler
implementations that generate the Growl notification message without
an external framework

I really hope the UDP protocol will be supported.

[Peter Hosey]

On Jul 24, 2008, at 06:07:52, Emmanuel Blot wrote:
> This would prevent from broadcasting notifications, which can be a
> useful feature.

What do you mean by this?

> Moreover it will require a more complex implementation on the
> emitter side, to deal w/ timing issues.

What do you mean by this?

[Emmanuel Blot]

>> This would prevent from broadcasting notifications, which can be a
>> useful feature.
> What do you mean by this?

Something nice with UDP is that you can broadcast notification onto a
LAN, so that multiple OS X machines receive the same notification. The
emitter does not have to know the receivers. You can't achieve this
with TCP protocol, as its a point-to-point protocol.

>> Moreover it will require a more complex implementation on the
>> emitter side, to deal w/ timing issues.
> What do you mean by this?

TCP uses a handshake protocol, i.e. the receiver must acknowledge a
connection request from the emitter, before the emitter sends the
message. If the receiver is busy (or slow), the emitter is blocked
till it receives the response from the receiver. Which means that the
emitter implementation is made more complex to deal with the TCP
protocol, so that it does not block the caller till the receiver
acknowledges the request. There is no "fire and forget" message
notification as it is possible w/ UDP

I guess this is far from being the "mainstream" usage of Growl, but I
find quite handy the current implementation where a server may easily
trigger a notification so that the client machines on a LAN all
receive the message. This is very easy to implement on server side,
and it's a simple as building and sending a UDP message within the
processing flow of the server app.

Cheers,
Manu