GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 167370
Battstat flashes 'lightening' during charging. Annoying and against HIG.
Last modified: 2005-05-10 05:34:18 UTC
This bug has been opened here: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/5326 "The GNOME Panel Battery Applet (battstat) uses the following states: On battery: percentage battery left as icon On AC +nobatt: AC Power cord icon On AC + <100%: AC Power cord icon + <blink>flashing</blink> 'lightening' symbol ("charging") On AC + 100%: AC Power cord icon The third state alternates between two pixmaps approximately once-per-second creating a 'flashing' effect. I (personally) believe this is (a) annoying (b) distracting (c) wasteful. Additionally, it is (d) Against the GNOME HIG (Human Interface Guidelines); viz: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/desktop-notification-area.html#id2526438 Icon, Animation, Guidelines * Icons should not usually appear animated. They may change to indicate a change of state, but should not do so when that change is occurs regularly rapidly. A battery status indicator would usually change slowly, therefore an icon is appropriate. [...] * Do not rely on blinking or animation as a means of alerting the user to any particular event. A suitable minimal patch to 'fix' this in a hackish way is the following patch before, which resets FLASH always for be FALSE. However, ideally an extra flag/configuration option be provided, with the default set to OFF. --- battstat/battstat_applet.c.orig 2004-11-08 18:09:11.000000000 +0000 +++ battstat/battstat_applet.c 2005-01-08 01:34:35.143784232 +0000 @@ -504,9 +504,9 @@ if(batt_life > 100) batt_life = 100; if(batt_life == 100) charging = FALSE; if(!acline_status) charging = FALSE; - battery->flash = battery->flash ? FALSE : TRUE; + battery->flash = TRUE; pixmap_index = (acline_status) ? (charging && battery->flash ? FLASH : AC) : (batt_life <= battery->red_val ? WARNING : BATTERY)"
Davyd: I can write up a proper patch for this if you think it's a good idea. As the patch would be non-trivial, it would break several freezes (code freeze, UI freeze...) Or we can wait for 2.12.
Write the patch now, you can always commit later :)
I want to rewrite the frontend graphics at some point to use an SVG battery, or something like that. Perhaps we should wait until then.
Created attachment 46183 [details] [review] new patch. the rewrite that has occured since the time of the last patch has trivialised this issue. this should handle it.
We should make the lightning bolt bigger since it doesn't flash. Possibly also less crap looking. You can commit this patch however.
Fix commited to HEAD.