Problems with Screensavers and other activity sensitive demons.

[Lubos Lunak]

On pá 8. června 2007, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Jun 2007 09:10:23 +0200 Lubos Lunak <l.lunak at suse.cz> babbled:
> > On Thursday 07 of June 2007, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> > > On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 02:02:01 +1000 Graeme Gill <graeme2 at argyllcms.com>
> > > babbled:
> > >
> > > XScreenSaverSuspend(). it's there. it's engineered. it's documented.
> > > the problem lies  not in lack of engineering in the X11 department. its
> > > a very clean implementation and exactly what you need. if screensaver
> > > apps are hacking around the xscreensaver extension and not using
> > > XScreenSaverSelectInput() + XScreenSaverNotifyEvent's - then they need
> > > to be corrected ad they simply are not playing nice (tm).
> >
> >  Actually, to my best knowledge, none of this is true, except for "it's
> > there" and "it's documented". It's over-engineered, it's unmaintained and
> > as a consequence it's broken. You can have a look at
> > http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1419 for why the XScreenSaver
> > maintainer thinks it's broken, and if that's not enough I can dig in the
> > KDE screensaver for more. Screensaver apps are hacking around the
> > extension or just plain ignoring it because they have to.
>
> if you don't have the extension - fair enough. hack. i know jamie WANTS
> just an idle event - but xscreensaver provides AN event when the
> "screensaver" kicks in (i.e. idleness for the xscreensaver timeout has been
> reached). this is sufficient (and necessary) for what it needed of
> xscreensaver (in the old fashioned pre xrandr 1.2 world). jamie chooses NOT
> to use it. i happen to use that interface and event - and it works. i see
> no GOOD reason for xscreensaver not to use it. the api and mechanism to do
> what graeme wanted is there without having to exec 23 things, use 3 dbus
> interfaces etc. etc. just to try and inhibit "screensaver of the month"
> from kicking in. i haven't tried the XScreenSaverSuspend() call yes - but i
> assume it works, if it doesn't that's a bug to be fixed (and works within
> the screensaver word - not works with hacks around xscreensaver like
> monitoring all events on all windows to hack around xscreensaver extension
> not existing).
>
> why do we nee4d dbus and "exec this" interfaces - and multiple ones. when a
> perfectly good one ALREADY EXISTS? :)

 Ok, I'll try with simpler words :). The XScreensaver extensions is not a 
perfectly good one, it's not even a good one. In fact, it sucks, it's broken, 
and there's apparently nobody to fix it. But I'd indeed like to be proven 
wrong (and, as I said, KDE after all tries to do the best with it).

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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