Battstat flashes 'lightening' during charging. Annoying and against HIG.

[Paul Sladen]

The GNOME Panel Battery Applet (battstat) uses the following states:

  On battery: percentage battery left as icon
  On AC +nobatt: AC Power cord icon
  On AC + <100%: AC Power cord icon + <blink>flashing</blink> 'lightening'
symbol ("charging")
  On AC + 100%: AC Power cord icon

The third state alternates between two pixmaps approximately once-per-second
creating a 'flashing' effect.

I (personally) believe this is (a) annoying (b) distracting (c) wasteful.
Additionally, it is (d) Against the GNOME HIG (Human Interface Guidelines); viz:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/desktop-notification-area.html#id2526438

  Icon, Animation, Guidelines

  * Icons should not usually appear animated. They may change to indicate a
change of state, but should not do so when that change is occurs regularly
rapidly. A battery status indicator would usually change slowly, therefore an
icon is appropriate. [...]

  * Do not rely on blinking or animation as a means of alerting the user to any
particular event.

A suitable minimal patch to 'fix' this in a hackish way is the following patch
before, which resets FLASH always for be FALSE. However, ideally an extra
flag/configuration option be provided, with the default set to OFF.

--- battstat/battstat_applet.c.orig 2004-11-08 18:09:11.000000000 +0000
+++ battstat/battstat_applet.c 2005-01-08 01:34:35.143784232 +0000
@@ -504,9 +504,9 @@
   if(batt_life > 100) batt_life = 100;
   if(batt_life == 100) charging = FALSE;
   if(!acline_status) charging = FALSE;

- battery->flash = battery->flash ? FALSE : TRUE;
+ battery->flash = TRUE;

    pixmap_index = (acline_status) ?
               (charging && battery->flash ? FLASH : AC) :
               (batt_life <= battery->red_val ? WARNING : BATTERY)

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167370: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167370

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Fired up 'top' and noticed the following:
                                                    _______________
 6514 root 15 0 158m 13m 3784 S 14.6 5.5 11:18.44 11:18 Xorg
 7907 paul 15 0 42192 13m 7196 S 16.0 5.5 1:45.47 1:45 gnome-terminal
 7783 paul 15 0 18456 2760 1876 S 0.0 1.1 0:46.02 0:46 battstat-applet
 7806 paul 15 0 98.5m 28m 14m S 0.0 11.9 0:41.67 0:41 firefox-bin

It's probably bad(tm) that battstat has used more cumulative CPU than mozilla! :-)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I've opened a bug upstream about this:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167370

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

fixed upstream

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

this upload fixes the issue:

 gnome-applets (2.11.1-0ubuntu1) breezy; urgency=low
 .
   * Sync with Debian.
   * New upstream version:
     battstat:
     - FreeBSD support.
     - Optional libnotify support.
     - Interface cleanup.
     - Addition of "Ubuntu-mode".
     - Testing backend.
     cpufreq:
     - Error dialogs are non blocking.
     - Able to change governer.
     drivemount:
     - Offer g-v-m style actions.
     gswitchit:
     - bugfixes.
     gtik:
     - use GtkColorButton instead of GnomeColorPicker.
     gweather:
     - search weather locations.
     - Add Beaufort wind speed scale.
     mini-commander:
     - replace GnomeColorPicker with GtkColorButton.
     mixer:
     - make mixer insensitive if there is no mixer available, only show the
       warning once.
     - control multiple tracks.
     - use startup notification when launching main mixer app.
     multiload:
     - use startup notification when launching the gnome-system-monitor.
     stickynotes:
     - use GtkIconTheme instead of GnomeIconTheme.
   * debian/control.in:
     - updated the Build-Depends.
   * debian/patches/02_battstat_icon.patch:
     - fixed with the new version.
   * debian/patches/04_battstat_no_suspend.patch:
     - undo this patch, that works fine now.
   * debian/patches/07_drivemount_mediamount.patch:
     - not required with the new applet.
   * debian/patches/11_modemapplet-sudo.patch:
     - fix some sudo problems (fixes #7761)