can_suspend_to_{x}

[Richard Hughes]

On Sat, 2006-05-06 at 10:28 +0200, Danny Kukawka wrote:
> On Friday 05 May 2006 22:16, Richard Hughes wrote:
> > In the spirit of making everything consistent [1] I think the:
> >
> >   power_management.can_suspend_to_disk
> >   power_management.can_suspend_to_ram
> >
> > keys should be:
> >
> >   power_management.can_hibernate
> >   power_management.can_suspend
> 
> IMO no. The kernel interface in /sys/power/state provide standby, mem, disk 
> why should the related keys in HAL named other than they are currently? I 
> don't see a reason to change this. If you would name/translate your desktop 
> application you can do what name the methodes as you want/prefer.

Yes, but choosing names that one team/developer prefers makes this
totally non-uniform across different projects, which is bad for users.

> > As we already call the methods Suspend() and Hibernate() and I'm trying
> > to make this a little more sane with all the power stuff for all the
> > overlapping nomenclature. 
> 
> Why not also call this methodes SuspendToDisk() and SuspendToRAM(), which is 
> for me more clear than Hibernate/suspend.

Does it? What if the hibernate action is saving the data to a network
share in the case of a diskless workstation?
Also, having different names mean developers have to manually remember
the association between two forms of terminology.

> > I'm sending similar emails to other projects 
> > as I want to make this as standardised as possible.
> 
> Some comments to [1]:
> ......................................................................
> > I hope this page can convert some of the wacky/zany/confusing/crazy software 
> > out there to stick to common names.
> 
> Why should a project change the name of the translations? There are projects 
> which exist longer than hal/gpm and using s2ram/s2disk. Why should they 
> change the by their users well known names? I see no inducement to do this.

No, but 95% of the feedback to the mails I've sent has been *very*
positive. It seems other people think this need to be cleared up as
well.

> > Developing gnome-power-manager (and a chunk of the power management in HAL) 
> > gives me first-hand experience of the ways users, distros, packagers and 
> > developers can and do get this wrong.
> 
> Why do you think they do this wrong? For KDE e.g. IMO everybody know already 
> the terms s2ram/s2disk/standby from klaptop and kpowersave since a long time. 
> Why should this be wrong and why should they change this?

Okay, I asked my mum what the differences between s2ram, s2disk and
standby are. She's not a wizz on a computer, but she's certainly no
newbie...

...and she didn't have a clue.

I'm not saying I'm forcing people to change the names used in software,
I'm saying it makes sense to all use the same terminology.

> > Bad Nomenclature
> > - Sleep  
> > - Standby
> > - Suspend-to-RAM 
> 
> Btw. Standby is used under KDE related to standby from /sys/power/state. 

Cool, I'll add this as a note.

> ......................................................................
> 
> > I figure getting the same names so it all makes sense when we document
> > it, is worth the short term pain of breaking (undocumented?) API.
> 
> No, this is not undocumented API. Take a look at the SPEC.

Okay, n/p - but changing key names has been done before and it's trivial
to add fallbacks in code that can't depend on newer versions of HAL.

Richard.