Re: MOUSE battery status applet

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

Hey Sergey,

On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 21:45 +0000, Sergey Udaltsov wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> There is gnome applet measuring the laptop battery status (reading
> some files in the /proc filesystem). I think we need something similar
> for wireless mice - they have batteries too. Someone pointed me to
> lmctl utility which works with logitech mice - and, in particular,
> shows the battery level. Unfortunately, it only works if some files in
> /proc/bus/usb are writeable - which is generally not the case (because
> of security reasone, sure). So, here are the questions:
> 
> 1. In general, would such an applet be a useful addition?
> 2. If usb interaction is required - should we make distributions
> responsible for making these files writeable (using hotplug scripts or
> whatever)?
> 3. If not - what would be the proper way to access them - should we
> create some interfaces on HAL level or something?
> 
> Any ideas/comments would be very welcome...

Given the scope of the problem, you're better off writing a small daemon
that would warn when the battery level is low, rather than an applet.
There's no need to know what the battery status is all the time (and
I've had an lmctl supported mouse for a year).

Some additional HAL properties would probably do it fine for getting the
mouse power status though.

Cheers

---
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>