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https://github.com/ia/battery-status

Battery applet/indicator for the GNOME
https://github.com/ia/battery-status

appindicator bonobo gnome2 gnulinux gtk2 gui laptop notify notify-osd pygtk python2 usability ux

Last synced: 11 days ago
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Battery applet/indicator for the GNOME

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
			GNOME Battery Status

	Battery Applet/Indicator for GNOME Power Management



GNOME Battery Status is a project for GNOME, that shows information about

laptop battery state. It has some additional features, so usual icon of

gnome-power-manager can be removed from notification/indicator area.

Battery Status doesn't rely on gnome-power-manager directly, but counting

on presence in system for some useful integration with it.



Table of Content

	0. Rationale

	1. Installation

	2. Basic Usage

	3. Additional Settings

	4. Technical Details

	5. Links



====



0. Rationale



gnome-power-manager's icon has got main user interface shortcoming (if its

purpose - to show battery information) - for see exactly battery percentage or

battery lifetime, user should hover mouse to icon, wait couple seconds, and

only then user could see required information (tooltip - the bad way for

getting information in such cases). Such behavior pretty annoying, so

Battery Status' applet hasn't got such behavior and allow to user see

percentage/lifetime/charge time of battery right in panel next to icon.

Also, using gnome-power-manager's icon, user can't direct place, where exactly

battery information should be showing.



/!\ Problems, which has been described above, can be solved

by using battstat-applet (Battery Charge Monitor applet), but it has some

historical architectural disadventages (such as relies on ACPI and HAL) and

user interface problems (such as using non-consistent icons) itself, and by

these reasons this applet has been declared as obsolete, has been deprecated

and removed from set of standart gnome-applets package in such key GNOME Desktop

GNU/Linux distributions as Fedora and Ubuntu (see also this [1] discussion for

more information)



Another impovement - warning message about critical battery charge.

gnome-power-manager supports notifications (via notification-daemon/notify-osd),

and this is very useful. But when user is deep in thoughts about his current

work/task/action/etc, his locus of attention (see [2] for more details)

may just couldn't see notification-like warning about critical low (which very

important if user hasn't get access for power) - it should be message on top of

all windows.



Device information dialog (which has been totaly deprecated in last versions)

from gnome-power-manager's icon has been replaced by battery

status dialog in Battery Status. In "Device Information" dialog all battery

information puts in one non-human-readable heap and this dialog doesn't meet

GNOME HIG requirements partially, but in "Battery Status" dialog battery

information divided by two easy-readable areas - one for battery capacity,

and another for battery charge.



====



1. Installation



Battery Status can be installed from package, or from sources.

For better experience you should re-login after installation.

Packages for Ubuntu can be found in this launchpad repository:

http://launchpad.net/~iaz/+archive/battery-status

Debian/Ubuntu-related source code tree (with debian/ directory for packaging):

bzr co lp:battery-status

non-Debian/Ubuntu source code tree (without debian/ directory):

git clone git://github.com/ia/battery-status.git

Command for installation from sources:

python setup.py install



====



2. Basic Usage



After adding applet at panel, by default it shows icon only.

From main menu user (by default) can get access to:

 - Battery Status dialog

 - Power Statistics (provided by gnome-power-manager)

 - Show setting

 - Text Size setting

 - CPU frequency scaling (provided by cpufreq-applet)

 - Power Management preferences (provided by gnome-power-manager)

From context menu (by clicking right mouse button at applet) user can get

acces to:

 - Bug Reporting (apport/launchpad integration)

 - GNOME Power Management help

 - About information dialog

 - generic applet-related options (such as Remove, Move, Lock To Panel)



====



3. Additional settings



Battery Applet uses GConf for settings. All keys can be found in

/apps/battery_status. Description for each key you

can find using gconf-editor.



====



4. Technical Details



Battery Status written in Python with using:

 - PyGTK - python bindings to GTK library

 - python-appindicator - python bindings to AppIndicator library

 - Bonobo - for integration application in GNOME panel as applet

 - GConf - for keep and manage applet settings

 - UPower/DeviceKit-power - for getting power information

 - D-Bus - for getting power information from DeviceKit-power and update it on changes



====



5. Links



homepage - http://live.gnome.org/BatteryStatus

github page - http://github.com/ia/battery-status

launchpad page - http://launchpad.net/battery-status



[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2009-August/002183.html

[2] "The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems",

	Jeff Raskin



Related links to other discussions and bugs:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/16-things-that-could-be-improved-in.html

(the same post - http://humphreybc.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/its-the-little-things-that-count

 see "What happened to the nice battery stats window?" section)

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-applets/+bug/462267

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-application/+bug/541609

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1263401

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1460826

http://chrisjohnston.org/2010/no-more-battery-status-tooltip-in-lucid

http://design.canonical.com/2010/04/battery

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BatteryStatusMenu



Feel free for sending any questions/advices/UX improvements/bug reports/feature requests/patches/etc.