power button on panel

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Tuesday 06 December 2011 18:00:31 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> agreed, but even with proper art it is one more item in the panel and imho
> each item in that panel makes it look worse. we should really put the bar
> high when it comes to what we put by default there. suggested criterion:
> 
> * the item must require global access (from apps or from the home screen)
> * the item must not be a duplicate of functionality elsewhere
> * the item must be fault-tolerant to accidental presses
> * the item must not interfere with the pull down functionality of the bar

I agree, accept for the second point: It might make sense to have 
functionality duplicated in the panel if all other points (especially the 
first one) apply. There might be cases where it makes sense to place a 
function in the app because it's needed in the context of other parts of it 
but additionally have a panel icon for global access. These are rare 
exceptions though, so in general rule still makes sense.

> this will leave less to distract the user, more room for what does need to
> be there and even room to add other things if need-be in the future (such
> as app- specific features)

Yup.

> apps need to do similar things anyways for things like auto-screen-off
> prevention. media players do it all the time. it's also very common in
> mobile apps.

Yes, but can we be sure all apps running on PA will do it? We might put it in 
the guidelines (which I still have not even started but will hopefully do 
soon, now that I have a working PA devel again ;) ), but I'm still not 100% 
sure. 
 
> hibernate is unlikely to be supported; shutdown can be achieved with
> long-hold on the power button.

If hibernate is not supported, it definitely needs to be removed from the 
battery icon menu (the button currently available there at least on Meego).
Long-hold on the power button is an emergency power-off. This has the risk of 
losing data because applications aren't terminated properly, hasn't it? We 
should not offer this as the only shutdown option.
People want to shut their non-phone devices down if they don't use it for a 
day or so, that's what I usually experience. And people are used to computers 
needing to shut down properly instead of just going power-off, so they'll only 
use that as a last resort when their whole system is frozen.
I personally even miss logout and reboot (what the heck am I supposed to do if 
I update my system and it tells me that some files might still be in use by 
open applications? At least Apper needs an option to re-login or reboot after 
an upgrade if there are no other "clean" ways to do so), but I agree that 
those are of no use for the average user. We still should not take away a 
proper shutdown option from them, though.

> yes ...
> 
> my remaining concern is that this means that the user must always
> purposefully put the machine to sleep through a multi-step process. which
> means the common case takes longer just so we can make this less-common
> case more convenient.
> 
> another thought: pressing the hardware button could lock the screen and put
> the lock screen into a "sleeping in N seconds" mode, with an item to drag to
> STOP it from sleeping automatically. so if you want it to sleep, hit the
> power button, forget about it. if you want it to ONLY lock, hit the power
> button and slide the sleep inhibitor.
> 
> this would make it optimized for the common case ("i'm done for now, let's
> put it away") while making the less common case easy to achieve?

In combination with proper "sleep prevention" built into most applications 
that need it this might be okay as a last resort for cases when a user wants 
an application which has no sleep prevention built in to continue running.