Smarter Screen saver

[Tristan Wibberley]

Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 23:04 +0200, Sami Dalouche wrote:
> 
>>Well, in the case totem crashes, the lock would never been removed, I'm not sure
>>this idea is the killer-idea, but there definitely must be a way to accomplish
>>this easily..
> 
> 
> Please forgive my ignorance, but I thought this 'D-bus' messaging system
> in Gnome was precisely supposed to serve that kind of purpose : let
> programs pass/share messages to other programs ?
> 
> Can't Totem etc, just broadcast a message saying:
> 
> "hi, just in case there is a screensaver out there, I am currently
> playing a movie, so please don't trigger the screen saver" 

I dunno, I think it would be nicer if the screensaver daemon asked the
window manager if it was okay, then applications could set an attribute
on any and all windows that should keep the screensaver at bay. That way
the window manager could keep a count of the number of toplevel windows
that were preventing the screensaver, and when the screensaver asks the
window manager it gets a zero ("okay to start"), or nonzero ("don't
start"). If an application dies or any window closes, the count goes
down automatically (from the point of view of the applications).

This would need a small extension to the window manager standards, but
freedesktop could specify that quite easily, and Ubuntu may be able to
add a non-standard attribute in a safe namespace (I don't know how the
window manager standards are structured) for programs that ship with it.

-- 
Tristan Wibberley

Opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily coincide with those
of my employer, etc.