Re: gnome-screensaver 0.0.23

["Jaap Haitsma" <jaap haitsma org>]

> Jaap Haitsma wrote:
>>>hmm, IIRC, the typing break in gnome-settings-daemon does idle
>>>detection, so maybe we should be using that instead of having it on the
>>>screensaver? The problem is the typing break does not have any DBUS
>>>interface, so it would need to be added.
>>
>> I like the idea of having this in gnome settings daemon. IIRC g-s-d only
>> looks at the keyboard and not at the mouse. So mouse idleness should be
>> added as well
>
> What is the advantage of having it in gnome-settings-daemon?

Detecting if a keyboard or mouse is idle seems like a general service to
me which several other programs might want to use. E.g. a disk
defragmentation tool or a backup tool.

> At the moment gnome-settings-daemon doesn't have idle detection.  It has
> a very crude type of activity detection.

Can´t we just move the code that handle keyboard/mouse detection you have
in g-s to g-s-d?

> In order to decouple idle detection from the screensaver you will need
> to solve a number of tricky technical problems.  How do you handle
> "inhibitors"?

If we just have keyboard / mouse idleness detection in g-s-d, g-s can just
handle screensaver inhibitors like totem like it is doing now, can´t we?

> How do you handle races between idle and screensaver
> activation states?  What is the sequence of events when the lock screen
> button is pressed?  How do you do idle activation warnings?  And so on.

Since I´m not familiar with all the internals of g-s I can´t answer all
these questions. But it sounds to me like g-s is also looking at CPU
power? Should it do that? I personally think it shouldn´t it should just
look at mouse and keyboard activity and have a list of inhibitors which
can block the screensaver.

> Seems more reasonable to make the typing break program gnome-screensaver
> aware.
>
I find it very weird that typing break and g-p-m should depend on an end
user app (a screensaver) to know if the keyboard/mouse is idle. Sounds
much more logical that keyboard/mouse idle detection is done some where
deeper in the software stack.

Later on we could also move stuff like network idle or cpu idle detection
into g-s-d. Gnome power manager could use these for instance


Jaap