Discussion:
Pause X Applications when windows are hidden
Rodney McDonell
2011-12-14 09:16:22 UTC
Permalink
After installing powertop, i noticed that many applications,
particularly X applications, do a lot of stuff when I’m not using them.
Firefox was a big one - even when the only page it had open was it's
default blank page you get when you create a new tab. Eclipse was
another. I figured why am i putting up with these applications draining
my CPU when I’m not using them? For instance, a browser is sometimes a
coders best friend so it pays to have Google close by, especially when
working on something your not familiar with. Who wants to continually
close and reopen applications?


So I've created a patch for the blackbox window manager, that allows the
user to select windows whos process should be paused when all the
windows of that process are obscured.

I use the word "obscured" because i primarily use the XVisibility event
to understand when windows aren't being shown which has the following
states: FullyObscured, PartiallyObscured, UnObscured.

I'm finding it hard to get any feed back on this as blackbox seems to
not attract many people these days and development has essentially stalled.

I'm hoping that some people on here will try this patch and tell me of
there successes or failures. This is my first contribution to the Open
Source community, so if you have some critical comments, let them fly,
I'm eager to learn.

You can get the patch and more info here:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3443852&group_id=40696&atid=428682


P.S This is for a laptop PC primarily. It wont work too well or may have
undesirable effects if your remote Xing. If anyone has any ideas on how
to detect, from a Window Manager if a Windows process is remote or not,
do give me a hint :).

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