Task Proposal: Unify suspend/shutdown with lock screen

[todd rme]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:
> User Story
> =======
> When finished using the device (which may have been 5 minutes or hours of
> usage), it is desirable to put the device to sleep to save the battery. In
> certain cases, such as when a download or other background process is ongoing
> and / or the time between usage is expected to be short, then it is desirable
> to just lock device rather than sleep it. If usage is not expected for quite
> some time (e.g. overnight or longer) where charging will not be possible, it
> can be more desirable to actually turn the device off altogether and so a
> shutdown option is required. A single, elegant interface for these functions
> will be provided.
>
> Why this is important
> =============
> Lock, sleep and shutdown are critical end-of-usage modes that people in
> different scenarios will need. Making these features easy to get to and easy to
> understand and use will make every end-of-use experience more pleasant.
>
> Proposed implementation
> ================
> * On the QML based, lock screen add two sliders: one for Sleep and one for
> Shutdown. The sleep slider will appear in the top left and shutdown in the top
> right, aligned vertically with the clock.
>
> * Upon locking, the sleep slider will start moving slowly on its own towards
> the "activate" position. User intervention will stop the slider, thereby
> cancelling the automatic sleep. This also gives the user feedback as to how
> long until the device actually sleeps when it locks (e.g. automatically after
> lack of usage)
>
> * The Shutdown slider will only trigger if the user actually interacts with
> it. If the user starts sliding it, the auto-sleep will be cancelled.
>
> * This would also be a good opportunity to move the lock screen into ksmserver
> itself, getting rid of the separate daemon that exists only for locking.
>
> Task Details
> =======
> Owned by: Aaron Seigo
> Effort Estimation: 2
> Task dependencies: None.

Could there be a way for programs to notify the system that it
shouldn't sleep, and then unblock the sleep when they are done?  Your
download example comes to mind.  Locking the screen while the download
goes then automatically sleeping when it finishes would be nice.  Of
course a user could still manually sleep under such cirmunstances.  On
the other hand, the risk of the user expecting the system to sleep but
instead staying awake and draining the batteries.

What about when plugged in?  Should the behavior change in any way
when battery drain is not an issue?

-Todd