Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion
Rockbox wont idle powerdown if music is paused and sleep-timer is set
monoid:
--- Quote from: Jason Taylor on October 19, 2015, 08:12:23 PM ---The thing is that the normal use pattern of the sleep timer is to deal with unpredictability, not to do planned and definite things, like to cook eggs.
--- End quote ---
I am not sure, this is right. At least not for me. If I set, switch off in 30 min. I meant it exactly so, there is no space for unpredictability.
It seems to me, you use the sleep timer for tasks that it was not intended for. And because of that you require different behaviour of it to meet your pattern of use...
Maybe that the solution would be to implement a special switch-off timer that would meet your requirements, which make sence in some cases, but do not in another cases.
Sleep timer should behave like expected by most of people, e.g. as "dull" sleep timer which switches off after preset time without any other conditions.
Switch off timer might fulfill more complex tasks....
I understand your point that it is possible to setup switch-off timer to behave like sleep timer, but it is technical poin of view. One should look at things from user perspective. Most of users do not read manuals and many have problems even with simple setups, not speaking of more complex ones. So simply, sleep timer should be sleep timer. And if there is another timer, than OK. Less advanced user would skip it, more advanced would use it.
I speak about interface. Internaly, both timers might be represented by single computer code, if possible.
Jason Arthur Taylor:
Thanks so much for taking the time to chime in, monoid. With 100+ posts, I’m sure everyone respects your opinion very much, and that you've now likely prevented any change to this sacred code. However, I am not smart enough to really understand all of your perspective, on many levels. May I ask you some questions? If so, here goes.
Firstly, is it true that you agree that, as I said previously,
“if one really wants an mp3 player to go to sleep at a set time all they would have to do after the patch is in is to disable the inactivity shutdown timer, or set it to be longer than the sleep timer. So, if you really want your player to go to sleep at a fixed time, you still will be able to, and you currently can, so there is no loss of a present feature by putting in the patch. So, even if I'm wrong, … you will still have this feature you like with the patch.”
? Also, do you agree that if the mp3 player shutsdown because someone enabled the inactivity timer and programmed that to go faster than the sleep timer, that it saves battery life?
The code already has two shutdown timers. To anyone who has used a laptop computer, which is most people using rockbox IMO, it is actually far less complicated to have both running independently, than the current situation in which one timer mysteriously, against the documentation, turns the other off, and without any explanation or warning. Consider a laptop. Does setting to shutdown in 120 minutes disable all other shutdowns, such as a hibernate setting at 60 minutes of inactivity? Or the screen saver? Or the hdd spindown timer? No. This is not how laptops are programmed. But this is how you apparently think they should be programmed. In a laptop, each timer runs independently. What you see as simpler, I see as strange, more complex, wrong, and disrespectful to most users who would welcome more battery life.
Is it correct that you think the average users here:
(1) don’t care much about battery life,
(2) are smart enough to mod the firmware of their device,
(3) are also smart enough to figure out how to turn on the sleep timer,
(4) but, mysteriously, are not smart enough to figure out how to disable the idle poweroff timer,
(5) and do not want the idle power off to work in conjunction with the sleep timer,
(6) and are not able to read the manual, which is currently wrong,
(7) and I, not you, have a special use situation, even though most people also shared my view.
Is 1-3 correct? Are you sure 4-7 are also correct? If so, why? What exactly is your use of the sleep timer that it makes battery life unimportant? Perhaps if we understood that, we’d be able to comprehend what you are saying better.
monoid:
“if one really wants an mp3 player to go to sleep at a set time all they would have to do after the patch is in is to disable the inactivity shutdown timer, or set it to be longer than the sleep timer. So, if you really want your player to go to sleep at a fixed time, you still will be able to, and you currently can, so there is no loss of a present feature by putting in the patch. So, even if I'm wrong, … you will still have this feature you like with the patch.”
No, I do not agree fully with this statement.
While it is logically and technically correct, it omits the fact, that the average user would not disable inactivity shutdown timer. And many users might be confused, many users might set the things incorrectly and than complain that there is a bug. Keep in mind that hardly any user reads the manual. Many users are not able to understand the manual. And that it is quite common that there are mistakes in manuals or manuals are outdated.
Because of that, user interface should be as self explanatory, as possible and as simple as possible.
Beleive me or not, it is not easy task to decide, what features and settings to include in SW and what not. It is not the more, the better.
And yes, I think 1 to 7 is generally true. But I would rewrite 4 and 6:
(4) do not know that there is the idle poweroff timer set on and influencing sleep timer
(5) many of them do not read the manual at all, and if by chance do, quite big part of them does not understand it (even if it is by chance correct)
Keep in mind, that ability to read does not mean ability to comprehend. And to comprehend interaction of two settings at two different places is beyond ability of quite high percentage of users. From my experience, I would guess 20%, maybe more. And manual reads about 10 to 20% users, so you migth have probably more than one half of confused users of this feature. (Keep in mind that part of RB users is not native English speaker, some hardly speak English, and even quite big part of native speakers has severe problems to understand more complex technical texts.)
That is why I suggested to add one more switch-off timer which would do what you suggest. It would be disabled on default. The idea behind it is, that user would know, that it is different from sleep timer and so there would be some chance that he would look in the manual what it is for.
I understand, that you desire that feature and OK, why not. But it does not seem to me be good idea to modify current behaviour of sleep timer. Instead I would suggest to add one more timer to do what you desire. :-)
But, I am not developer of the RockBox and thus I have no influence on what is going to be implemented and what not. I just shared my opinion on the topic.
[Saint]:
I spent a very long time just now painfully rebutting all the points you made, and, just now, I highlighted all that text and deleted it.
Because...y'know what? It's just not worth it for me to invest my time in disingenuous claims and some laughable attempt to paint me as a dictator because I have an opposing view from you and a higher position in this forum. That doesn't make me a dictator. It makes me just as you are, a person with an opinion.
The reality here is that unless I see any indication otherwise, I am going to choose to believe that your claims about battery life being increased exponentially are invalid.
Why?
Simply put, I have no reason to believe that anyone else, let alone the majority, is using the sleep timer in the same way you are.
[Saint]
gevaerts:
For the record, rockbox is *not* a democracy. Looking at it as a dictatorship with the committers in power is probably a fairly good way of looking at it. And yes, that is wanted.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version