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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Knowing when a screensaver is active
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       1999-05-21 9:19:57
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Holger Thon wrote:

> Andreas Pour wrote:
> >
> > I think the idea is the popup would be put there by the screensaver (meaning
> > there should be a way to notify screensavers that an application wants
> > attention -- like sending it a certain signal, that's fairly
> > straightforward).  If you have two processes trying to be on top, you get a
> > silly battle.
>
> Wouldn't this mean that the screensaver needed an interface to do this?

Yes, you would need a screensaver that works with the protocol.  I think people
were exploring new protocols b/c if the screensaver does not agree then there is
a battle about which window is on top --> ergo you need a screensaver that agrees
--> ergo the screensaver needs to understand the protocol for it to work.  Note
that if (a big if) someone actually gets a nice wrapper class for Xscreensavers,
you might get them all in one pop . . . .

> Then you can't use a screensaver of your choice with this app.

Yes you can, you just won't get all the features (namely, the popup window).

> And what do you suppose to do when someone REALLY wants to lock screen
> or sends an xforcescreensaver() to his display? Maybe he's away 36 hours
> and his workstation is up night and day. Then this nice popup would do
> interesting things to the monitor. You can`t expect that everybody has
> enabled DPMS on his XServer, for not everyone supports it.

Good point.  I think I mentioned that the pop-up window would "float" over the
screen, like a ping-pong ball; of course you could vary this and have different
algorithms (like jumping around, fading in and fading out, etc.).

> I don't see the point where it could be necessary to notify the user of
> something when the screensaver is active. I would say, the standard user
> has stopped activity for some time when the screensaver runs. What would
> be so important to notify the user what's going on? :-)
> When the user is away, he won't see it anyway. And if he is there and
> want's to know what's going on, he could stop the screensaver again and
> look if any popups appeared. And if this is too much work in his opinion
> he could change the timeout or even turn the screensaver off.

So you don't like this feature :-).  Personally I see a use for it (though not
enough to do it myself :-P)  -- if I am across the room and I want to see if I
got some e-mail I can tell by whether this pop-up is on the screen.  Depends on
your model of how screensavers are used . . .

Regards,

Andreas

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