Re: GNOME Power Manager

[Davyd Madeley <davyd madeley id au>]

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 01:06 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> 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?

It's become recently fixable using SVG and the ability to fiddle the SVG
DOM. We didn't want to do the segmented display for the battery applet,
which does make theming that much more challenging.

> > 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).

I'm not entirely sure how the vendor is related to this. I would think
this fix belongs in GNOME. Perhaps there is something here to be said
for "we really, really recommend not removing this applet" when you try
to remove it.

> > , 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.

Better programmatic interfaces are certainly required. I spoke about the
requirements of these at length during the last GUADEC, but
unfortunately no one has really found the time to start implementing
these.

> 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. 

A new applet infrastructure that worked for both the panel applets and
gdesklets (as one thing) would certainly be nice. I still think a viable
short term solution could be to allow the UI to be proxied over D-BUS.

> [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.

Very true, but the nm-applet D-BUS interface could be integrated into
something else... say netstatus-applet. I've been meaning to do this for
quite a while now, but I've simply never found the time (it's a common
theme).

People want to include g-p-m because it solves a specific problem and it
does a pretty good job of it (although I do have some bugs to file). The
question for me with respect to our modules is not "should we include it
because it is good software", but "how can we turn it from good software
into great software".

--d

-- 
Davyd Madeley

http://www.davyd.id.au/
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