Comment 7 for bug 1100546

Belated thanks to TJ for that good analysis.

I see two things going wrong here. First, "(not present)" should only be used for internal batteries; peripherals that aren't present shouldn't be shown at all. There are thousands of possible chargeable devices not present on your PC, so I don't know why the menu is singling out a mouse and a keyboard here! But I hadn't made that explicit in the specification, so I've done that now. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Power?action=diff&rev2=50&rev1=49>

Second, even when the menu does contain a "(not present)" component, it shouldn't end up as the primary device when any other devices are charging or discharging.

Both of those should be fixed, but if *either* was fixed, Stephen wouldn't have experienced the bug.

Peter, thanks for the proposal, but I don't think that would solve the problem. If someone connected their notebook to power and removed its battery, with your alternative they'd still see "not present" in the menu bar even when something more urgent was going on, like a wireless keyboard about to expire.