GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 316462
disabling some xscreensaver hacks we using random
Last modified: 2011-03-06 06:46:08 UTC
I would be nice if there was a way to disable hacks when using random. Sometimes I only want to cycle through some of the hacks, not all of them.
Right. The way I see it is that if the user doesn't want the theme to show in random then they don't want it at all. Or at least that covers almost all uses. So, the problem reduces to how can we allow the user to remove themes from the list in the preferences dialog? My current thinking is that we'll start using .desktop files to define the themes and use something similar to the xdg-menus spec for a list of themes. The user will be able to right click on a theme and delete it from the list.
Well, in principle I agree with you. However some of the (xscreensaver) themes fetches stuff from the "net", and when I don't have internet access I want to disable them, but normally I want to include them. An easy (and obvious) way to add/remove themes would also solve the problem.
This is also important for the xscreenscreensaver hacks. Some of them can confuse users, and we have quite a few of them disabled by default. Unfortunately, the disabled flag is stored in a somewhat arcane format (look for lines starting with a minus in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/XScreenSaver), but it would be good to reuse this information.
I think the right way to do this is to use the desktop menu spec and .menu files to define the list of screensavers.
A vendor or sysadmin now has the ability to set the default list of screensaver themes using the desktop menu system. I still need to add a way for the user to remove items.
I still think there also has to be a clean and obivuos way to temporairly disable themes.
When right-clicking to disable a screensaver move it in grey to the bottom of the screensaver list? That way they are out of the way, yet not lost.
*** Bug 331886 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 64217 [details] [review] proof of concept patch for gnome-menus Here is a patch for gnome-menus that is an example of what we'd like to do. Apply the patch then run: export PATH="${PATH}:`pkg-config --variable privlibexecdir gnome-screensaver`" gmenu-simple-editor
Kind of a toy but maybe useful to some people like sysadmins. gnome-menus in CVS now has the ability to do: export PATH="${PATH}:`pkg-config --variable privlibexecdir gnome-screensaver`:/usr/libexec/xscreensaver" gmenu-simple-editor gnome-screensavers.menu
In my opinion, removing unused hacks or savers from the machine is not the answer. For one thing, we want all the hacks/savers available to every user. So just because user AAAA doesn't want one hack, user BBBB might want it. Also, I like to have all the hacks/savers visible for selection, because my tastes/moods change. Just because I am tired on "Mondrian" one day doesn't mean I won't want it in a week. I'd like the same functionality that xcsreensaver provides. That is, show the user the full list of available hacks/savers and have a checkbox by each one. Only checked screensavers then get used in "Random screensaver" mode. This seems straightforward and intuitive UI.
Using the example in comment #10 does not change the themes that are available to every user - only the current user. The tool also has a reset to defaults button or you can selectively reenable themes. I realize that using gmenu-simple-editor is not ideal. If someone wants to extend gnome-screensaver-preferences to do the equivalent I'd consider that.
*** Bug 360893 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Sorry for the bug spam, I want to be CCed on this
Is anyone actually working on this enhancement request? I find it bizarre that it has been marked as low priority.
you can also edit the gconf-entry for gnome-screensaver: 1) set screensaver to random and not on a piece of paper which ones you want 2) open gconf editor and find apps/gnome-screensaver 3) edit the themes key by removing the unwanted themes http://www.gnome.org/~bmsmith/gconf-docs/C/gnome-screensaver.html good luck tom
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. However, you are using a version that is too old and not supported anymore. GNOME developers are no longer working on that version, so unfortunately there will not be any bug fixes for the version that you use. By upgrading to a newer version of GNOME you could receive bug fixes and new functionality. You may need to upgrade your Linux distribution to obtain a newer version of GNOME. Please feel free to reopen this bug if the problem still occurs with a newer version of GNOME.