Re: [gpm] Using HAL: reporting.low and reporting.warning

[Jaap Haitsma <jaap haitsma org>]

Richard Hughes wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 05:11 +0100, Jaap Haitsma wrote:
>
> > Hi Richard,
> >
> > My batteries have as properties in HAL a reporting.low and 
> > reporting.warning (also charge_level.low and charge_level.warning and 
> > these have the same number so I guess they are the same thing)
>
>
> Yes, defined by ACPI, and exported by HAL. I'm not sure if these are set
> at manufacture time, or change with the battery lifetime.

These settings are fixed. Low or critical battery capacity remains low 
no matter how old your batteries are.

The thing that changes is the last_full capacity. These decrease due to 
aging of the battery.

> > Can't we use these properties instead of the sliders? Or are these 
> > properties not present for all type of batteries?
>
>
> I think maybe these values could set the default for the sliders, but I
> think the sliders should remain -- as people have different preferences

Let me try to convince you that people do not have different preferences 
here.

When batteries are getting low people just want a warning which says 
that their batteries are low and that they have let's say 10, 20 or 30 
minutes more. If batteries are critical there should be a warning dialog 
and the laptop should hibernate within 10 seconds if the user does not 
cancel it. (We should still add this option that a user can cancel 
hibernation, a user might want to hit the send button of his mail 
program before hibernating )

The sliders with percentages do not work well if you for example now and 
then use 2 batteries now or use batteries with different capacities.

The unit for setting the thresholds for the batteries should be mAh or 
mWh instead. But that's far too technical to display in a UI, but they 
should be the units we calculate with.

> -- and ACPI values are famously unreliable/wrong.

If the ACPI values are unreliable/wrong then also the charge percentage 
will be wrong.

Jaap