GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 317092
totem should disable the screensaver during play time
Last modified: 2008-11-29 01:12:09 UTC
While watching video using totem its a bit of a pain when the screen saver engages. Totem should disable the screensaver so it doesn't interfere with watching video. Other information:
See bug 120980.. it already does that in fullscreen mode..
What about when its not in full screen mode? Like when I'm sitting watching a kernel build and watching video at the same time? There should at least be an option to disable the screen saver when not in full screen mode also. i.e. Disable screensaver (*) Fullscreen (Default) ( ) When playing video ( ) Replace with full screen video/visualisation ( ) Always ( ) Never I would think that having it switch to full screen instead of the screensaver engaging would be a pretty cool option, and pretty unique also, if you can get it to respect the screensaver engage time.
I'm kind of curious about why you (the devs) chose not to disable the screensaver at all times when video is played. In some cases - videos are just too small to view in fullscreen and are watched in small windows. Some people have really short screensaver intervals (1 min), so even a short film would be interrupted by a screensaver.
Totem only disables the screensaver in fullscreen, because if your attention was on the film, you would put it in fullscreen (and you can zoom out if the quality is too low to watch in fullscreen). Disabling the screensaver when Totem is playing but not in fullscreen means that Totem playing music, or a film on another workspace would disable the screensaver, which is unwanted. You need to look at better notifications that your other jobs are finishing, rather than kludge Totem into disabling the screensaver.
I thought open source software was about choice? By giving the user choice over the behaviour they desire then you keep everyone happy. At least take my comments over how the choice can be presented to the user and set the problem as a feature request with a target milestone sometime in the future. To me this isn't a large issue but the unwillingness of developers to even consider giving the user choice seems a little too single minded. Closing this as notabug doesn't even present the possiblity of it becoming a configurable feature.
Yes, open source software is about choice. You can choose to use this software or not, or have somebody write that particular feature for you and share it with your friends and interested parties. I don't consider this feature useful, and your explanations didn't change my mind. Keeping this bug opened, especially with a target milestone would mean that it's been accepted, which is not the impression I'd want to give to people reading this bug. Find a (couple of) reason(s) why we should disable the screensaver when playing and not in fullscreen.
1) Its a common, almost expected feature of most players, in windows both windows media player and winamp have this feature. 2) When a screensaver time is set low (as is mine) it makes watching short clips or movies in a window intollerable. 3) While doing things on a computer sometimes you just vegitate to your video, while waiting for an email to come in, or a process of a few minutes to complete, in this instance I would like to be able to disable the screensaver. 4) Other users would probably appreciate the choice to be able to set totem to one of the behaviours stated above. 5) Having totem fullscreen replace the screensaver would be a unique feature and with that implemented it shouldn't be too far from doing each of the other features. 6) It is sensible to offer the user choice over the behaviour THEY desire, not what you force upon them, if we are restricted to one behaviour in THE default gnome media player than it will retract from the ethos of gnome in general and deter users who desire this functionality from using totem, and maybe even gnome.
Why not just weigh the worst-case scenarios against each other: 1. Screensaver not disabled - Possible interrupt of a video I'm watching in non-fullscreen mode. (which I should have a right to) 2. Screensaver disabled - My beloved screensaver doesn't appear until the end of the video. Personally, I see 1) happening a lot more often than 2), and also causing a larger degree of disturbance. I don't see many people filing bug reports about "hey, totem just disabled my screensaver when I was playing video", but they are apparently coming in about "hey, the screensaver interrupts my video every minute or two". I don't see a need for a config option, and frankly - having totem in fullscreen replace the screensaver seems like something the user really doesn't expect, and often doesn't want. I'm sure the HIG says something about unexpected changes to whatever it is you are looking at. I'd say: at all times when playing a video, or when playing audio in fullscreen (visualisation) totem disables the screensaver.
I think a config option is a better way to go, that way more behaviours can be catered for. For instance, when I'm listening to music, I'd like the visualisation to go full screen in the time the screensaver would engage.
*** Bug 344577 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I agree, we need this as a configurable feature. Mplayer does, for example. If the developers don't want to include it, can you please point me to the file / general line #s that do this function so I can write a patch? Firewing1
Any news on this? Thanks!
Totem's already been doing that for a while. See the code in src/plugins/screensaver/totem-screensaver.c if you think this might have been closed in error.