Doubts about xdg-su and xdg-screensaver (Was Re: First xdg-utilsbeta release)

[Bastian, Waldo]

>Hi Waldo and list,
>
>On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 00:41 -0700, Bastian, Waldo wrote:
>> The curious that don't want to bother with unpacking tarballs can
read
>> the documentation here:
>>
>> 	http://portland.freedesktop.org/xdg-utils-1.0beta1/
>
>xdg-su really needs to go.

Thanks for your feedback I will look closer into the links that you
provided wrt PolicyKit, unfortunately I missed your GUADEC presentation.

>> Commands
>> suspend WindowID
>>
>>         Suspends the screensaver and monitor power management.
>>         WindowID must be the X Window ID of an existing window of the
>>         calling application. The window must remain in existance for
>>         the duration of the suspension.
>>
>>         The screensaver can be suspended in relation to multiple
>>         windows at the same time. In that case screensaver operation
>>         is only restored once the suspensions have been restored in
>>         relation to each of the windows
>>
>> resume WindowID
>>         Resume the screensaver and monitor power management after
>>         being suspended. WindowID must be the same X Window ID that
>>         was passed to a previous call of xdg-screensaver suspend
>
>Two issues with this
>
> 1. AFAIK, this can never be implemented in gnome-screensaver because
>    it's fundamentally broken: What happens if the process goes away
and
>    the window sticks? What if a process don't have a window?

The X server cleans up windows if the process dies. If a process doesn't
have a window it can't use this interface. It's of course an interesting
philosophical question why an application would want to disable the
screensaver if it doesn't do anything with the screen :-)

> 2. We're trying to solve this already by standardizing on D-BUS
>    interfaces. See
>
>
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg-list/2006-May/008139.html
>
>    for details.

Yes, I'm aware of that and welcome that, but at the same time I believe
that this functionality should be made available _now_ without requiring
dbus and without requiring a distro upgrade. I don't see xdg-screensaver
competing with org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver but as complementing each
other.

>I think that Jon McCann, gnome-screensaver maintainer, might explain a
>lot better than me what the issues here are.

Yes, I had the pleasure to talk with Jon last week.

Cheers,
Waldo