[Usability] A battery applet...

[Sergey Udaltsov <sergey udaltsov gmail com>]

Hello

There is some work going in the HAL project, related to the devices
having batteries. First result of this work is exposed in the patch
submitted to the HAL specs (see the "battery" section).

In a word, any device having battery provices the "battery" capability
and exposes some set of battery.* properties. So, there is a plot to
create some general purpose battery applet (ghm, I am not saying I
will do it tomorrow:) - derived from the Battery Charge Monitor. User
will be presented with the choise of all the devices having battery
(automatic icon pickup, of course) - so the applet will indicate the
status of the device chosen by the user.

Would it make sense to modify existing applet - just allowing user to
choose among available battery units - or there should be completely
different approach? Will user understand what he is asked about? What
the list of devices should look like? For a moment, the "info.product"
property can deliver on my laptop something like:
- "Computer"
- "USB receiver"

(my Logitech wireless mouse is picked by the name of the receiver).

Any comments/objections/insights are welcome.

Sergey