TedPage

Back when I wrote the Bazaar Power Management plugin (still the only VCS with desktop power integration) I also wrote a small little command line utility. The utility came out of a discussion at UDS that no one wanted computers sleep by default if there was no easy way for command line apps to ensure that the computer won't go to sleep while they're running. I really want all Linux desktops to sleep by default. So I wrote this small utility.

And a few people asked me questions, which resulted in me sending it to them, and then I thought that I'd just make things simple and put it into the gnome-power-manager package for everyone. And I did. And that shipped with Intrepid. But nobody uses it because I never promoted it. Now I am.

If you go and you call the utility gnome-power-manager-inhibit it won't do much. That's because it works similarly to nice and time in that it works while the rest of the command line is running. So if you do:

$ gnome-power-manager-inhibit ls

Then you can rest assured that your computer won't go to sleep while listing that directory. What is more common for me is that I'll kick off a build before going to bed:

$ gnome-power-manager-inhibit make install

Where I know that if the build takes over a half hour (my configured sleep time) the computer won't go to sleep. But, my computer will be asleep when I wake up in the morning.

I hope that helps people to start configuring their laptops (and desktops) to sleep automatically. It really is important.

posted on Fri, 23 Jan 2009 at 23:28 | permanent link

When people try to talk about how working on Open Source is some sort of social work I'm usually dismissive; saying something like "well, we're not curing cancer." Wouldn't you know it? People are trying to prove me wrong!

Recently Deviant Art held a contest with the Susan G. Koman foundation to make art informing people (okay, mostly women) about breast cancer. Lorain A. Baird won for her work titled Pinkitude for life (right) which was done in Inkscape. For those who don't know Deviant Art it's a website where artists from all over using all different mediums gather to share and comment on each other's work. This means that that the contest included entries spanning the possibilities of tools and techniques, and an Inkscape entry won. Of course, the true credit there goes to Lorain for her great work, but I'm proud for Inkscape too.

Looking through Lorain's Gallery there is a ton to love, but I started reading through the comments on her portrait of Louise Brooks and noticed a comment that was really nice. From montroytana:

ive never seen a piece of art (before yours) and said GOD ive got to have the program that made that! your stuff is really wonderful

That's the feeling that I want everyone to have when thinking about choosing Open Source software. I want them to be so impressed with what they can do that they feel empowered to go get it done.

I'm hugely proud of the Inkscape team in what we've accomplished and I think that I can speak for all of us and say that we're impressed with all the great work that Inkscape artists do to make us look good.

posted on Sun, 11 Jan 2009 at 23:05 | permanent link

One thing that kept bothering me in the GNOME UI Hackfest was how little data applications export out to the desktop. As I was in the shell group we were discussing various things that we wanted to do and John Mccann kept having to remind me not to worry about the implementation as I would get frustrated that we simply didn't have the data. I want to fix this. I want to have the data in a structured way.

What I've come to realize is that we need to let applications be applications, let panels be panels and let applets be applets. With the notification area specification we created a way for applications to break through this barrier and put a little segment of the application into the panel. While this sounds great, and it has created a quick way to prototype some interesting ideas, it's also created a complete mess in our panels. There is no consistency of action nor in look for that section of the panel. I like to call the notification area the "bag of crap." While it's created a way for applications to innovate, it's drastically stalled innovation for panels and shells.

What I'd like to put forward is the idea of little flags that applications can hold up to say what they're thinking or doing, which I'm going to call indicators. The application can then represent in a structured way that it's got something of interest to the desktop as a whole, and then the desktop can represent that to the user. How ever it likes. It's not the application's responsibility to figure out how to do this, or if it needs to be done in a single place or multiple, or anything other than raising the flag. While I think that this might frustrate application developers at first in that they don't have control over the display of this information, I think that long term it will empower them in that they don't have to fiddle with this type of interaction any more.

First off I want to build something simple (start small, think big), the messaging indicator, which will mostly consist of a GNOME panel applet. It will do simple things like represent IMs and e-mail and not a lot more, but the real goal is starting to get applications like Evolution and Pidgin to export this information. Once we're there, then we can start to look at new ways to use it. I love the idea of having the Evolution icon having the number of unread messages a la Apple or Gwibber also putting messages in the messaging indicator. Those are all next steps, but I think important ones in starting to explore how we can get data out of the applications and to the users in usable and attractive ways.

posted on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 at 23:52 | permanent link