Re: [gpm] Re: Gnome 2.16 Module Proposal: GNOME Power Manager

[David Zeuthen <david fubar dk>]

(dropping desktop-devel-list from the Cc)

On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 19:13 +0200, Danny Kukawka wrote:
> Btw. I don't understand: What's the problem with a system daemon (with a well 
> defined DBUS-Interface, with a well defined default policy, without need a 
> session daemon) specialized to powermanagement. You can use provided 
> functions, but you don't need to use all available if you don't need them in 
> g-p-m. The daemon is _complete_ desktop _independent_, I think this was the 
> whish of Davyd Madeley (* A daemon with no GTK+ dependance that would be 
> suitable for cross-desktop use).

Desktop independency for the sake of.. well desktop independency... is
just pretty point-less. 

Here are *some* of the problems

 1. You need something running in the session anyway
    - to provide a D-BUS interface for inhibiting actions
    - to read the users settings

 2. It's completely stupid to read system wide settings from a different
    location than per-user settings. Code duplication is bad.

 3. Having a system-wide daemon encourages very silly things
    - read plain text system wide settings from /etc instead of the
      default area of your desktop configuration system - what happens
      when your desktop configuration grows an LDAP backend? 
    - do completely silly things like grepping the process list and
      refuse to suspend e.g. when a process named "mplayer", "totem"
      etc. is running

 4. What if GNOME wants a crack-rock interface in the system daemon and
    the KDE don't want this because they don't like so many options?

 5. Splitting g-p-m into more than one process will most likely just
    complicate the code and introduce bugs. The interface is *not*
    simply "upload settings from gconf to system daemon" since you
    want to popup dialogs from time to time.

Also see http://blog.fubar.dk/?p=63 if you haven't already.

Have fun.

    David

>  This would be a win-win situation for all desktops.

It's great when KDE and GNOME can share specs and software.

However, this is kinda an area where we may be too different.

     David