This post is intended to be a complete guide to how com.nokia.HildonSVNotificationDaemon works.

com.nokia.HildonSVNotificationDaemon is the dbus interface used by the N900 to play ring tones, SMS tones, IM tones as well as various notifications from hildon-desktop.

The full specs of com.nokia.HildonSVNotificationDaemon can be found here
https://github.com/community-ssu/hil...ion-daemon.xml

I am not entirely sure what the code does with the notification_sender parameter but the examples I have seen show it as being a dbus sender e.g. "1.678"

The hints parameter is the one we are interested in. Here is a list of the hints that the system will look for:
category string (what category this event is)
alarm-type string (set this to either "clock" or "calendar" as appropriate)
sound-file string (the sound file to play)
volume int (the volume to use although volumes set in the settings appear to override this)
vibra string (the vibrator pattern to use)
override boolean (if set to 0, it will use the sound/vibra set in the settings otherwise it will use the ones passed in above)

Valid categories are:
system-sound
incoming-call
sms-message
sms-message-class-0
voice-mail
chat-message
auth-request
chat-invitation
email-message
alarm-event
system-critical
play-sound
system.note.infoprint
system.note.dialog

Hopefully this helps anyone who wants to properly play a ringtone, SMS tone or other event from their code (either whatever is set in the settings or some custom tone file)