Power Management

[Richard Hughes]

On Fri, 2007-06-08 at 10:35 -0400, Kent Quirk wrote:
> Is there a mechanism for either applications or users to change the 
> parameters? And what constitutes "idle"?

Very good question. In GNOME, idle is where the keyboard or mouse is not
moved, and the session is not inhibited.

> In particular, I'm thinking about the book reader. If you're sitting 
> around under a tree reading, and you're not a particularly fast reader 
> or you get distracted, it could get really annoying to have the display 
> keep turning off.

In gnome-power-manager we dim the screen after a few seconds. This is
really annoying if you are thinking about code, so I've developed an
algorithm that learns, i.e. if you undim the screen immediately after
it's dimmed (or turned off) then the timeout is doubled.

> Similarly, turn-based games over the mesh might have you waiting while 
> your opponent moves, and you might not be sitting there tapping the 
> keyboard while waiting.

That requires a session level inhibit ("don't suspend") for the duration
of the game.

> I think an aggressive set of defaults is a good idea, but both 
> individuals and applications may want the ability to tweak them.

What about just learning what the user wants? Then there's no need to
tweak anything..

Richard.