Animation/Python/PyGames vs battery charge

[david at lang.hm]

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, Rózsás Gödény wrote:

>> Ensuring this background-idle behavior will not only allow the
>> activity that's frontmost to get 100% of the CPU cycles.  It will also
>> allow the XO to suspend and power down if that frontmost activity goes
>> idle.  (If you're chewing up CPU in the background, the system won't
>> auto-suspend.)
>>
>
> Maybe sugar could suspend those activities which are in the background
> so the activities don't have to worry about it. Also it would be fool
> proof.

please don't do this in the window manager. there are lots of good reasons 
to keep a program running while it's in the background

even for games you may want to have them wake up every 60 seconds or so to 
send a keepalive packet on any network connections that they maintain to 
avoid the connection timeing out.

and especially with slow Internet connections I expect kids will quickly 
learn to start a page load and switch to something else while waiting for 
it. suspending the browser when it's in the background will cause all 
sorts of grief.

David Lang