Written by AndrewLuecke the 30 Nov 08 at 04:42.
Related project: Gnome.
Status: Deleted
Rationale
There should be a way for users to declare a centralised list of programs where the screensaver (or monitor power saving) should never run for. Maybe under screensavers-advanced.
Some programs like VLC support an option to do so already, however, a centralised way of doing so would allow any program to disable the screensaver, whilst still providing burn-in protection (or monitor power off) in cases where it is required.
It's a much better option for businesses who run Openoffice Impress slideshows 24/7 in the store window and have to disable the protection entirely normally. Only to find impressed crashed overnight and there is now an error message burnt into a plasma screen which is only 20 hours old.
This way, if impress crashes, the screensaver would still be active if its been set up properly.
what about an area of your screen that just disables the screen saver? I mean, what about watching movies in firefox? You don't always want firefox to disable the screen saver, but some times you do...
Impress should disable the screensaver while viewing a presentation, so you don't need to disable the screensaver completely like in the example given here. If any program that should disable the screensaver temporary doesn't do that, it is a bug in that program. We don't need a separate list for that.
Moreover, only running a program should not disable the screensaver. E.g. for impress, the screensaver should be active when you are just editing a presentation, but disabled when a presentation is being shown.
@AndrewLuecke: I should have communicated that better. How about just an area of your screen where if the mouse is there the screensaver is disabled. eg: move your mouse to the top right corner and the screensaver won't come on. I'm pretty sure this already exists in kde, I'd imagine the same should exist in gnome.