= Preface =

The main page about this topic is on my website, at [[http://santoro.tk/emms-remote.html|http://santoro.tk/emms-remote.html]]

Thus, it may be outdate.

Screenshot is at [[http://santoro.tk/pics/emms-easy-notify.png]]

= Emms-notification and easy-notify =

easy-notify is a small python script which draws notification widgets on the screen
using libnotify (python-notify in debian). It provides -t option for widget title, 
and -m option for widget message.

I've then written some elisp code and hooks to call it nicely... I so get popup very
nice notification when another songs is being played.

I'll group all that code in a repository, some day of theese.

easy-notify code is:

<pre>
#! /usr/bin/env python

"""
easy-notify: simply draw notification widgets on the screen.
Depends on: python and python-notify (libnotify)

Tested on: Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze (testing)

Copyright 2010 Emanuele Santoro <santoro@autistici.org>
License is GNU GPL version three or any later publishied 
by the free software foundation.
"""

import sys
import pynotify
from optparse import *

parser = OptionParser()

parser.add_option("-t", "--title", help="title of the notification widget",
		  metavar="TEXT", dest="title")

parser.add_option("-m", "--message", help="message of the notification widget",
		  metavar="MESSAGE", dest="message")

(options, args) = parser.parse_args() 

if pynotify.init("emms-notifier"):
	n = pynotify.Notification(options.title, options.message)
	n.show()
	sys.exit(0)
else:
	print "there was a problem initializing the pynotify module"
	sys.exit(1)
</pre>

Save this code in a file called **easy-notify**, mark it as executable and
install it in a directory which is in your **{{{$PATH}}}** environment variable.
I've installed it in **~/.bin/**, which is in my **$PATH**


Elisp code is:

<pre>
;; system-notify: make a nice notification widget on the screen
(defun system-notify (title message)
  "invoke easy-notify with a title and shows a message"
  (interactive "")
  (start-process-shell-command "*Output*" nil 
			       (replace-regexp-in-string "&" "&amp;" (concat "easy-notify -t \"" title "\" -m \"" message "\""))))

;; use system-notify with emms
(add-hook 
 'emms-player-started-hook 
 '(lambda ()(system-notify 
	     "emms is now playing..." 
	     (emms-track-description (emms-playlist-current-selected-track)))))
</pre>


= Further ideas... =
Well, none at the moment.

But i've written system-notify lisp function qite generally, so I think i'll
bind it to other hooks. Because I love to use Emacs... From outside emacs, 
too ;-)