Re: [gpm] [Bug 617529] gnome power manager doesn't recognize battery at startup

[Brian Hutsell <bhut_ooto yahoo com>]

> Sure. All ubuntu-mono-dark has to do is rename the icons. Or, we get
> the the compatibility symlinks added to icon-naming-specification
> tools.

If you mean that your suggesting that ubuntu-mono-dark should map their icons to the new naming convention recently adopted by gnome-power-manager, then how is this done sanely?  It is impossible to stay compatible and get the old behavior back b/c the new behavior isn't as expressive.


> With the icon states no longer tied 1:1 to percentage levels, we can
> base the icon color and graphic based on the discharge time, not the
> physical battery fullness. That's one big advantage.

Although the existing code doesn't do anything remotely like that, I'd have to agree, this mode of operation has merit.

I'd like to revive my prior suggestion to enable an icon-naming-compatibility-mode which would allow older icons to still be used with their previous behavior.  There is no need for gnome to maintain two sets of icons.  Gnome can simply set the option to use the new style icons, and provide only the new icons.

As for the "two modes are harder to maintain" argument, I'd have to say that once the names are chosen and coded, nobody will be touching that part of the code.  Stable, bug-free, unchanging code doesn't require any effort to maintain.  All of the code for choosing the icon names in total is only 155 lines of code.  Changing that code to support the compatibility mode shouldn't introduce very much additional code.  The compatibility mode preference should be cleaner and easier to do than the symbolic links anyways.

I hope you'd agree that not breaking the existing non-gnome themes has enough merit to warrant a modest change to the gnome-power-manager code.  If I make and test this change, will you incorporate it into your git master?  If you'd rather make the change yourself, that's fine too.

--Brian

---

From: Richard Hughes <hughsient gmail com>
To: Brian Hutsell <bhut_ooto yahoo com>
Cc: GPM Mailing List <gnome-power-manager-list gnome org>; Jakub Steiner <jimmac gmail com>; Jon McCann <jmccann redhat com>
Sent: Fri, May 14, 2010 7:06:49 PM
Subject: Re: [Bug 617529] gnome power manager doesn't recognize battery at startup

On 13 May 2010 22:26, Brian Hutsell <bhut_ooto yahoo com> wrote:
> I figured out why my icons broke with this change: I wasn't using "gnome"
> icons, I was using "ubuntu-mono-dark".  The reality is that people like to
> customize linux.  That's part of the attraction of open-source; if you don't
> like something, you can change it.

Sure. All ubuntu-mono-dark has to do is rename the icons. Or, we get
the the compatibility symlinks added to icon-naming-specification
tools.

> I propose that the icon names used natively by gnome-power-manager should
> return to their more expressive former glory.
> Did I miss anything?  Does anybody have any reason why we shouldn't move
> forward with my proposal?

With the icon states no longer tied 1:1 to percentage levels, we can
base the icon color and graphic based on the discharge time, not the
physical battery fullness. That's one big advantage.

Richard.