Automatic lockscreen

[Henry Troup]

In article <1990Jun21.031248.3031 at smsc.sony.com> dce at Sony.COM (David Elliott) writes:
>   1. Have a call to the server to find the amount of idle time.  A
>      program could then ask for idle time every few (user-specified)
>      minutes and decide what to do.
>
>   2. Implement an extension that sends an event to the root window
>      when the standard screensaver would be invoked, allowing a
>      client to register for that event.

I received the following from Tim Theisen <tim at cs.wisc.edu>
   
   I have written an extension for the X server that returns the idle time.
   I first wrote it for R3.  When Henry asked about R4, I had just completed
   changes for R4.  The availability of the new version was not widely know.
   Xidle is available from expo.lcs.mit.edu.
   The filename is contrib/xidle.shar.Z
   
   We have a system called CONDOR that queries the X server for idle time
   as part of the test of whether the workstation is idle.  (CONDOR runs
   jobs on otherwise idle workstations.)  But as Guy Harris points out, it
   is not part of the standard protocol and therefor no guaranteed to be
   present in the X server.
   
   CONDOR also has a fall back mechanism that it uses when the X idle extension
   is not available.  It periodically does a passive grap on the keyboard.
   When a key event comes, it records the time, sends the key event to the
   appropriate client and exits.  The more frequent the period, the more
   accurate the idle time will be at the cost of overhead during the periods
   of keyboard usage.
   
   I prefer the using the extension to determine idle time (of course :-).
   However, if there is sufficient interest, I could probably post the
   keyboard watching daemon from CONDOR.
   
   ...Tim
   
   Tim Theisen             Department of Computer Sciences
   tim at cs.wisc.edu         University of Wisconsin-Madison
   uwvax!tim               1210 West Dayton Street
   (608)262-0438           Madison, WI   53706

So there it is - NOTE I didn't write it!
--
Henry Troup - BNR owns but does not share my opinions | Not one of 100% of
..uunet!bnrgate!hwt%bwdlh490 HWT at BNR.CA 613-765-2337 | Americans