[xorg-bugzilla-noise] [Bug 1419] New: please resurrect the "XIdle" extension from X11R5

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https://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1419        
   
           Summary: please resurrect the "XIdle" extension from X11R5
           Product: xorg
           Version: 6.8.0
          Platform: PC
               URL: http://ftp.rge.com/pub/X/X11R5/contrib/xidle.tar.gz
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Lib/Xext
        AssignedTo: xorg-bugzilla-noise at freedesktop.org
        ReportedBy: jwz at jwz.org


It's ironic, but the MIT-SCREEN-SAVER extension is useless for the
xscreensaver program that is shipped with just about all of the Unix
desktops (I'm its author).  All xscreensaver really needs is a way to
know how long the user has been idle.  The MIT-SCREEN-SAVER extension
does all kinds of other crap that gets in the way.

Consequently, xscreensaver has to do all kinds of crufty things (like
selecting input events on every window) in order to determine idleness.
And these methods don't always work (it tends to fail to notice
activity from USB mouse wheels, for example.)

Back in X11R5, there was a nice, simple extension called "XIDLE" that
simply returned the length of time since the last user input event
(keyboard or mouse activity.)  It was never ported to X11R6.

Is there any chance that this could be resurrected and made a part of
the Xorg server?

This exension would be useful not only for xscreensaver, but for any
other program that wanted to report, or act on, idle time; for example,
chat clients that want to report "away" times.

You can find a copy of the old XIDLE code in the X11R5 contrib
directory, for example,
http://ftp.rge.com/pub/X/X11R5/contrib/xidle.tar.gz

But the gist of it is just this:

       Bool XidleQueryExtension (Display *display,
                                 int *event_basep,
                                 int *error_basep);

       Status XGetIdleTime (Display *display,
                            Time *idletime_return);

       Gets the time since the last input event.  If it succeeds, it
       returns nonzero and stores the milliseconds since last input
       event in idletime_return.

Comments?        
   
   
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