Re: [gpm] Re: gnome-screensaver 0.0.23

[Jaap Haitsma <jaap haitsma org>]

Richard Hughes wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 11:26 -0500, William Jon McCann wrote: 
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I just released a new version of gnome-screensaver (0.0.23).  There are 
> > a few changes worth mentioning here:
>
>
> <snip>
>
> > * The removal of the getIdle D-Bus method.
> > * The renaming of getIdleTime D-Bus method to getActiveTime.
>
>
> getActiveTime allows to to get the time the screensaver has been
> running, but what if the user sets the screensaver to disabled? Then we
> get no ActiveChanged signal, nor can g-p-m use g-s to find out the idle
> time of the mouse and keyboard.
>
> In an ideal world, I would like g-s to emit "IdleStateChanged true" when
> idle for > 60 seconds (and false when the keyboard is pressed or the
> mouse is then moved) -- then other programs can then call a method
> getIdleTime() to get the time the keyboard/mouse has been idle. This
> minimises DBUS signal traffic.
>
> This would be independent of the screensaver. This information is
> already calculated in g-s (for the screensaver internals), and I'm
> guessing it would be fairly easy to export it again. 
>
> I really don't want to duplicate all that nasty X11 code in g-p-m just
> to get the idle time when the screensaver is disabled.
>
> Comments please,

I've been discussing this topic with Richard already. We don't share the 
same vision on this. For the people who have not followed that 
discussion. Here's my view.

I don't really see why gnome power manager should depend on 
gnome-screensaver for getting the idle time, because as a user for some 
reason I might not want to install gnome-screensaver. A better solution 
is to have one C file exporting the function

int get_keyboard_mouse_idle_time ()

If that file is part of gnome-screensaver, gnome-power-manager would 
just copy that file and put it in a cut-n-paste directory like the way
it's currently done with libegg files

Jaap