screensaver spec - cleaning up the mess

[Harald Sitter]

Hey guys,

Currently there are 3 (somehow equal) approaches for screensaving on the 
freedesktop.

On the one hand xscreensaver, which is the oldest and probably most advanced, 
on the other gnome-screensaver and kscreensaver where the latter even got a 
seperate (_static_) wrapper for xscreensaver.

But, all three seem to be in one way or another not interoperable, so I can't 
use all of gnome's screensavers in kde (at least not on ubuntu) and only 
those xscreensavers which got a pre-defined desktop file for kscreensaver.

So maybe creating a spec defining paths, desktop file's content etc. as well 
as a generic access system, so that gnome-screensaver as well as kscreensaver 
become just configuration front-ends, would be meaningful.

I'm thinking of
* a basic library which handles fetching of information etc.
* some generic tools for screen locking, starting the screensaver etc.
* a generic daemon with configuration file(s)
* a xscreensaver-gui for configuration on desktops without own front-end
* and gnome-screensaver resp. kscreensaver as specific configuration
  front-ends to the GNOME and KDE desktops.

In all front-end cases they just edit the configuration files for the daemon, 
which is then either choosing the proper password boxed and the way to start 
the screensaver for the currently used desktop (i.e. a Qt password dialog for 
KDE and a GTK+ password dialog for GNOME an XFCE) on it's own or it just 
makes use generic utils to take care of that (for example xscreensaver-lock).

What do you think about this idea, and are there actually people willing to 
work on that? I supposed maintenance for the front-ends would probably 
decrease a lot, wouldn't it?

Best regards
-- 
Harald Sitter
Amarok team        Rokymotion division     sitter.harald at gmail.com
amarok.kde.org     rokymotion.pwsp.net     apachelogger at kdetalk.net

PS: please CC Jamie (xscreensaver dev) in replies as he's not subscribed
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