Re: gnome-screensaver 0.0.23

[William Jon McCann <mccann jhu edu>]

Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> In the end, on an X based system, it's all going to come from querying
> the X server anyway.   I know I'm going to regret asking this, but
> would that be the logical place to do it?   Or a small X client application
> that sits on top of the X server and effectively serves as a X protocol
> <-> DBUS translation layer for idle time messages?

However, once you take into consideration:

* Setting the session idle when the screensaver is activated manually
* Activating the screensaver when the session is idle
* Allowing applications to block the idle state transition
* Providing a warning of the idle state transition
* Requiring feedback that the state transition was successful
* A policy mechanism for the idle timeout
* Abstracting X11 details

It starts to look a lot like gnome-screensaver but without the 
screensaver windows.  So, you'd have to have another daemon that only 
does the window stuff.  Is that better?  I don't know.  But it is harder 
to make the interaction between the first and second bullet items above 
work nicely, it introduces possible races, uses more resources, confuses 
the D-Bus API, etc.  I just don't see the problem that this would solve.

Jon