Re: GNOME Power Manager

[David Zeuthen <david fubar dk>]

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 11:57 +0800, Davyd Madeley wrote:
> Why not ditch the hideous abuse of the notification area icon instead,
> and get the applet to communicate with gnome-power-manager over D-BUS.

I like the fact that g-p-m is themeable (Richard just committed Tango
icons in addition to the existing Bluecurve ones), the applet is not..
though it's probably fixable, yes?

> Or better still, if g-p-m can't talk to an existing battery monitor of
> some description (maybe a desklet) it will use it's own notification
> area icon as per the configuration.
> 
> Not everyone wants to use the notification area. I've also seen people
> who have removed it

Maybe their operating system vendor should have made measures to ensure
that the user can't remove the notification area (which indeed is
possible).

> , because they didn't like the notifications in it
> (rather than realising they could disable the problem applications).
> This is why I wanted to see more abstraction of the UI elements from the
> policy elements.

I fully agree with you but I think Richard's point about the need for a
better programmatic interface to the applet infrastructure is needed.
Today, g-p-m makes it easy for distributors to include, they don't have
to mock around with including the battstat applet in default panel
configurations etc. Things like that.

Can I suggest to start a new thread here on d-d-l about the applet
infrastructure [1] so we can focus on what's important in this thread:
Namely the inclusion of gnome-power-manager? Personally, I think Richard
done a really really good job (also on the HAL side of things) and I'm
sure that when the desired applet infrastructure is there he will move
to using it. 

Vote yes for gnome-power-manager in the next GNOME release.

Thanks,
David

[1] : it's not only g-p-m, it also applies to the not-so-aptly named
nm-applet from NetworkManager and other things etc.