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Hi

I think it would be good if Dragon Player disabled the screensaver when playing a video.

My apologies if this has already been suggested, or exists somewhere already, but I was unable to find it.

Thanks

It's been YEARS since I began wondering "Why the **** can't they disable screensaver when a movie or anything is in fullscreen ?!"

So yes, big +1.

I agree and it should also prevent a PowerDevil to turn of the screen.

Edit: I knew I posted a similar idea some time ago:
plasma-powerdevil- ... 39033.html

I wouldn't say that your idea is duplicate, more that that my is an alternative sollution to same problem.

I'm actually really surprised considering that MPlayer does disable the Screensaver, and has for as long as I can remember...

It's strange that it isn't implemented already, but I have to wonder if the right place to implement it is in an individual app...somehow it feels like this is something that should be implemented system-wide if possible.

Something that would detect if something is using a full-screen mode maybe. That way it wouldn't matter if it was dragon player, vlc, a game, or whatever that was running.

Kryten2X4B wrote:It's strange that it isn't implemented already, but I have to wonder if the right place to implement it is in an individual app...somehow it feels like this is something that should be implemented system-wide if possible.

Perhaps phonon could report its status and powerdevil could listen for it and switch to and from the correct power profile (video or music) automatically.

Kryten2X4B wrote:Something that would detect if something is using a full-screen mode maybe. That way it wouldn't matter if it was dragon player, vlc, a game, or whatever that was running.

I wouldn't want it to detect full-screen mode exclusively. Instead, I would want it to detect when I am watching a video or listening to music and switch to the correct power profile independent of the window size. Detecting full-screen mode as well could be useful, though.

Kryten2X4B wrote:Something that would detect if something is using a full-screen mode maybe. That way it wouldn't matter if it was dragon player, vlc, a game, or whatever that was running.

First of all, it does not have to be in full-screen mode. I usually watch videos in windowed mode, and I still don't want the screensaver to kick in. So MPlayer's solution is better - if the video is playing, no screensaver.

But if you just detected playing videos, then you'd run into the problem that Flash ads might prevent your screensaver from starting.

So I really think MPlayer's solution is the most sensible - if it plays a video, it tells the screensaver not to start.

TheBlackCat wrote:Perhaps phonon could report its status and powerdevil could listen for it and switch to and from the correct power profile (video or music) automatically.

That actually sounds like it could work. At least I hope it's as doable as it sounds

TheBlackCat wrote:I wouldn't want it to detect full-screen mode exclusively. Instead, I would want it to detect when I am watching a video or listening to music and switch to the correct power profile independent of the window size. Detecting full-screen mode as well could be useful, though.

Me neither. I thought detecting full-screen mode would just be the easiest way to get things started. In other words, a better-than-nothing before the feature was more fully implemented.

KDE doesn't do better-then-nothing stuff, because the devs are wise enough to know that if they implemented a better-then-nothing solution, a real solution wouldn't be made because the problem's, "fixed" (system-tray-transparency, anyone?)

This is how Microsoft does it: Windows send a signal (WS_SYSCOMMAND/SC_SCREENSAVE) to the window that currently has focus. This signal is a question: Can I, Windows, turn off the screen please? The application has the right to answer "no you can't" and then windows won't. Think there where more signals like this. Seems like a good solution to me.

Madman wrote:KDE doesn't do better-then-nothing stuff, because the devs are wise enough to know that if they implemented a better-then-nothing solution, a real solution wouldn't be made because the problem's, "fixed" (system-tray-transparency, anyone?)

Okay, a bad choice of words on my part. Still, "better than nothing" can mean many things. It can mean implement something half-assed to get users stop whining about something, OR it can mean first implement something but with some features missing to get started. KDE is certainly no stranger to the latter meaning.

Besides, I doubt people (users as well as devs) would consider a "stop screensaver from kicking in if in full-screen" a fix to this problem. A stop-gap measure at best.

bratwurst wrote:This is how Microsoft does it: Windows send a signal (WS_SYSCOMMAND/SC_SCREENSAVE) to the window that currently has focus. This signal is a question: Can I, Windows, turn off the screen please? The application has the right to answer "no you can't" and then windows won't. Think there where more signals like this. Seems like a good solution to me.

This is a typical windows solution, since it gives the application total power, authority, and responsibility to do whatever it wants and assumes that developers will both make the proper effort and act responsibly, while giving the user no choice in the matter. However, I do not think it is a good KDE or Linux solution which leaves the ultimate decision up to the user. I think using power profiles that users can customize to their liking is a much better solution. The application only says what it is doing in a general sense, and that determines the power profile that is set. This also allows things like processor usage, sleep mode, and other power-related settings to be set as well. Further, why only the program that has focus? In the days of multi-monitor setups and huge screens, you can't assume that the video you are watching will actually have focus.

Kryten2X4B wrote:

TheBlackCat wrote:Perhaps phonon could report its status and powerdevil could listen for it and switch to and from the correct power profile (video or music) automatically.

That actually sounds like it could work. At least I hope it's as doable as it sounds

This is actually my favourite suggestion in this thread, especially considering that Phonon is the multimedia framework used by all apps.

Madman wrote:This is actually my favourite suggestion in this thread, especially considering that Phonon is the multimedia framework used by all apps.

It is just an example. Other frameworks and apps could report their status in the same way (such as "playing video") and powerdevil (or any other power manager) could change its power profile in the same way. I assume this would be dbus-based. The good thing about Phonon is that application developers that use it do not have to worry about this themselves, the framework could handle it for them. Likewise mplayer and xine would probably handle this for all of their various front-ends. I am not sure if gstreamer can do the same or not but if it can it should.

The main thing is for the framework to do as much of the work as possible so individual application developers do not have to worry about it. The more people that have to implement this the more of a chance someone won't or will do it wrong or inconsistently. Covering Phonon, Xine, Mplayer, and Gstreamer frameworks will cover most popular multimedia applications, while VLC does not appear to be used as a back-end for something else much if at all so it could be done at the application-level.

Of course these are not KDE projects, unlike Phonon, so KDE developers do not have the authority to make them implement this, unlike Phonon which is a KDE project (which is why I focused on it). Although, as open-source projects KDE developers could provide the patches, or at least tell them how to do it themselves.

[quote='TheBlackCat']
Perhaps phonon could report its status and powerdevil could listen for it and switch to and from the correct power profile (video or music) automatically.
[/quote]

Would this work for flash "movies" in the browser?