Suppressing the screen saver in a full screen game

[Scott Ritchie]

Ubuntu 9.04's new notification system is really nice and non obtrusive, 
however it can still get in the way if you need the entire screen. 
Accordingly, the notifications system has been designed to not draw 
notifications when a program such as a movie player is telling the 
operating system to suppress the screen saver.

I propose we enable this functionality for Wine whenever we've switched 
to a full screen mode.  I assume there's also a similar function for 
applications on Windows, so if we haven't done so already we should 
probably implement that and suppress the screen saver then as well.


Thoughts?

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie

[Marcus Meissner]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 11:44:30AM -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> Ubuntu 9.04's new notification system is really nice and non obtrusive, 
> however it can still get in the way if you need the entire screen. 
> Accordingly, the notifications system has been designed to not draw 
> notifications when a program such as a movie player is telling the 
> operating system to suppress the screen saver.
>
> I propose we enable this functionality for Wine whenever we've switched to 
> a full screen mode.  I assume there's also a similar function for 
> applications on Windows, so if we haven't done so already we should 
> probably implement that and suppress the screen saver then as well.
>
> Thoughts?

I think the app is supposed to do this for instance via

dlls/user32/sysparams.c and the SPI_SETSCREENSAVERRUNNING SystemParameter

or hook into ddraw in some methods.

Ciuao, MArcus

[Reece Dunn]

2009/4/16 Scott Ritchie <scott(a)open-vote.org>:
> Ubuntu 9.04's new notification system is really nice and non obtrusive,
> however it can still get in the way if you need the entire screen.
> Accordingly, the notifications system has been designed to not draw
> notifications when a program such as a movie player is telling the operating
> system to suppress the screen saver.
>
> I propose we enable this functionality for Wine whenever we've switched to a
> full screen mode.  I assume there's also a similar function for applications
> on Windows, so if we haven't done so already we should probably implement
> that and suppress the screen saver then as well.
>
> Thoughts?

Sounds like a good idea.

Also, Compiz/Fusion (or the KDE equivalent) would also need disabling
on full screen (as some apps have issues with it), and restore when
leaving full screen (if it was previously enabled). This should be
handled on the Windows side from the DWM APIs. IIRC, there is a DBUS
protocol which enables this to be done on the Linux side (which should
be appropriately #if HAVE_DBUS'd).

Searching on Google, it looks like the screensaver protocol is also
dbus (e.g. http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7002?getfile=1123 for a
patch that adds this support to mplayer). It also looks Gnome specific
(FD.o does not appear to have a screensaver specification). I could
not see what KDE uses (if it is a C++ API it will be unusable for
Wine, although http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2002-March/011941.html
provides a script that calls various helper programs, so not sure how
useful it is).

Does anyone know if the Gnome protocol is stable, or if it is likely
to be dropped/changed? Also if it is supported by KDE3/4?

- Reece