[proposal] Modify the panel-plugin interface, add 'powersave-mode'.

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Stephan Arts wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was taking the dog for a walk this morning when I thought about the
> panel-plugins.
> Nick did a good job with the clock-plugin, which can be configured to
> burn less CPU-cycles by disabling the seconds. The same thing can be
> done for the pager, if it has an option to just display the workspace
> names it won't have to respond to changed screens. hence, less
> CPU-cycles.
> 
> I think there might be other panel-plugins which (could) have a
> configuration which reduces the amount of cpu-cycles used.
> 
> It might be an idea to add a 'powersave' function to the panel-plugin
> interface. This way the panel can order all plugins to switch between
> a user-configuration and a powersave-configuration.
> 
> What do you think about this idea? (Disclaimer: I did not have my
> morning-coffee yet)

No, that's the wrong place for this.  After we have a proper power 
management daemon (or even before, if people run g-p-m or something), 
plugins that think the machine's battery might benefit from doing less 
stuff during power saving mode can listen to the daemon via D-Bus to 
know when the system is in a power saving state or not.  This seems way 
too domain-specific for the panel itself.

	-brian