Timestamp on Growl notifications

Sounds reasonable - and especially useful for those using sticky notifications.

I'm new to Adium development but I'm currently working on implementing this.

Cool! :)

I've finished implementing this but I think I need some input on how the time stamp is to be displayed in the notification. The way that I have currently coded it, is to simply prefix the notification description with the time stamp surrounded by square brackets. For example:

<title>
[<time>] <description>

I can easily change it to be included in the title rather than the description but I really need some feedback on this. I'll attach a screenshot of some actual notifications with time stamps.

Growl notifications with time stamps

That looks fine to me. Hopefully, you're using the user's short time format (see NSDateFormatter).

I wasn't but I am now. I've also added this as a new option when adding a Growl notification to a particular event, so along with having the option to make the notification 'Sticky' there is now also the option to 'Show time stamp'. I figured users may not want the time stamp on every different type of notification. Also, how do I got about getting the interface strings localized?

Nice work stuartc! Looks fine to me, but would it be possible to put the time in the top-right corner instead? I believe this lower the focus that time has in your screenshot.

David, unfortunately this is not possible as the Growl API currently does not allow the option to place specific text, it only allows two different lines, the notification title and description.

GrowlAlert.nib with new option to show time stamp

One comment I have from just reading it over quickly: remember the case of RTL languages; [NSString stringWithFormat:AILocalizedString(@"[%@] %@", "A growl notification with a timestamp. The first %@ is the timestamp, the second is the description text"), timestamp, description); might be a better idea.

You're absolutely right, I completely overlooked this requirement. I'll will update the patch with your suggestion included. Thanks.

Growl notifications with option of showing time stamps

Actually the above is mostly completely wrong. I, also, overlooked the fact that description is the message text when not including the subject. Just because a user's localization is RTL doesn't mean a message is. I'm not sure Growl even handles RTL text (at least, our implementation; we're passing around NSStrings, which lack the NSParagraphStyleAttributeName.

The above being my AILocalizedString() 'hack', not the patch.

I see your point. The AILocalizedString() 'hack', simply changes the ordering of the time stamp and description. As you said this also does not taking into account whether or not the received message is in a RTL localization. Even if Growl did support RTL text then this would still be an issue, but only for messages sent from a contact and possibly for custom statuses. Am I right in thinking that all other notification text is effectively generated by Adium.