[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Maemo Alarm/Notifier Interface

[From: Frantisek Dufka]

Weinehall David (Nokia-M/Tampere) wrote:
> 
>>No in PalmOS off is not off. On Tungsten T2 you can set it to be waked 
>>up by initiating bluetooth connection with it when it is 'off'. You can 
>>also schedule alarm procedure which gets executed and the display is 
>>even not waked up if you wish. Unlike with N770 you really can't 
>>shutdown PalmOS and battery is not removable in most units so there is 
>>not this type of problem there. Solution for N770 would be to remove the 
>>poweroff item to make it behave like PalmOS and maybe also implement 
>>suspend in kernel which pauses all tasks and powers off unneeded 
>>hardware. But the current system is also good, just don't let users 
>>shutdown the device so easily.
> 
> 
> Why?!?

Why not let users shutdown easily? Because you keep the state and don't
need to boot the device through tons of /etc/rcx.D/* (and do it in 
advance without user noticing anything) to handle single alarm and then 
shutdown it again. Because with proper suspend (or should it be called 
standby?) instead of poweroff you may save enough battery to have it 
look like real poweroff without any ill effects. Because this is a PDA 
or 'Internet Tablet' not unix server that can take minutes to boot or 
shutdown and noone cares because you do it once per several years.

Current 'Switch off!' mode should be something people should do only 
when the want to put the device to drawer for months and want the 
battery charged (which you could do by removing battery anyway). On ipaq 
you have very awkward key combo for this mode buried deep in manual on 
page noone reads. Not directly in menu on device. And yes in this mode 
alarms are not supposed to wake up the device :-)

> 
> Power management efficient enough to make suspend meaningless 

If the suspend is taken as replacement of poweroff the reason is here 
because it should pause the device in the midle of playing video or 
sound. Take it as the current 'Lock touchscreen and keys' plus pausing 
sound and network plus anything that takes power or keeps state that is 
useless after couple of minutes.

Maybe suspending tasks is not needed after all just send them different 
signal so they know device will be paused for many minutes and may wake 
up in different environment so they should really finish/stop what they 
do. So it is probably about more device modes than current offline or 
flight mode (are they same?) and normal.

> I cannot really understand why a lot of people here seem to want
> crippled functionality just because other platforms have limitations.

Instant poweron and proper pausing of everything when you press one 
button is not crippled functionality but very simple and neat thing Palm 
devices do and people expect.

Regards,
Frantisek