Re: gnome power manager inhibit

["Odysseus Flappington" <deriziotis gmail com>]

On 19/10/2007, Richard Hughes <hughsient gmail com> wrote:
 
> > This is pretty basic laptop stuff, and since equivalent bugs haven't
> > been reported on Windows and that generally I've never come across
> > these problems, I would conclude that they've found a more effective
> > way of implementing this.
> 
> They haven't. Asking each app "can i suspend?" doesn't scale, and it
> only takes one app to say "no" all the time to get a very hot closed
> laptop.

Scott referred to this as well, and I would
just like to clarify that the so-called 'manual suspend' was never an
issue. I think we all agree that if the laptop is closed, it should 
always suspend whether it's playing music, copying files or burning a CD. I am focusing completely on 'auto-suspend'.

> > Are there any plans to look at the design of the suspend/hibernate
> > mechanisms that Gnome implements and re-work them? What consensus has
> > been reached regarding this issue already?
> 
> Well, over time more and more stuff uses these interfaces. I think
> brassereo (sp?) already uses the interface when burning a CD. It's


> probably a 10 line patch to add this functionality into applications.

I
can see how in the long-term, and with increasing exposure to the GPM
specs, people will start using the API properly. And for now, I plan to
promote the spec as it's currently laid out. Meaning, as Havoc
suggested, I have started submitting the bugs in the relevant applications I've pointed out, and promoting the existing design as it stands. 

However, I still think if it's at 

all
possible, that the ownus should be put on the OS to automate, or at
least partially automate things and not be put on each application's developer.

There are a whole series of applications for which I can't see a solution. i.e. Wine applications can't be modified; no-longer
maintained/awkward/platform-independent applications not written specifically for Gnome (i.e. Cinelerra, Blender, Maya, ET: QW?, other games?). Not to mention that I don't think any
 KDE apps currently implement Gnome's inhibit methods. Laptops can't suspend in the middle of running these kinds of apps, it'll drive laptop users away from Gnome in hordes.

Luca mentioned the upcoming gvfs depending on dbus. Is putting an inhibit in here a possibility?

- WIll this sort out the Synaptic Packager download problem since it's writing to the filesystem?
- How about capturing from firewire? I do know that it writes the captured stream directly to the fs. 
- Will Gnome recognise running KDE apps? When KDE writes to the fs, will it go through gvfs? how about desktop-environment-neutral apps?
- What problems could occur with apps that run in the background and read/write from the fs? 3rd-party backup software which synchronizes when the computer isn't in use? Anything else? Can we have these apps call an API to inform Gnome to ignore them?
- Will this solution inhibit when burning cds?

Alex