Removing disable idle system screenlock as default behaviour for Plasma 5

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Mon, 27 Apr 2015 12:57:19 +0200
Daniel Vrátil <dvratil at redhat.com> wrote:
> I never had a problem with my screen autolocking when watching movies
> or playing games (what else are you people doing that you just stare
> into the screen for 5 minutes?) - and if you do, the fix is not to
> disable auto- lockscreen, the fix is to fix the broken software that
> does not set inhibition correctly. 

I beg to differ.

Aside from watching movies or playing games, some of us also tend to...
well, for example... *read text*. (You know, that pesky old-style thing
that modern young generations frown upon...)

A long, complicated, need-to-be-read-very-carefully kind of text ---
that requires some meditating over each paragraph or even each sentence
--- can appear in various circumstances and in various formats:

* on a web page (disable autolock for firefox?)
* in a text editor (disable autolock for emacs?)
* in a man page (disable autolock for man and less?)
* in an e-mail client (disable autolock for kmail?)
* in a pdf viewer (disable autolock for okular?)
* and so on...

I guess you can see where this is going. If you've ever stared for 10
minutes at a screenful of C code in a text editor trying to debug it,
or a complicated set of equations in a pdf trying to understand
them, or a philosophy text on a website trying to contemplate over it,
or a poem in a foreign language trying to practice reading it aloud, you
should know what I am talking about.

Aside from reading text, one of the very frustrating things is a karaoke
party, when the screenlock kicks in while everyone are watching the
YouTube video on the screen and singing to it...

There are also many other examples, like an architect analyzing the
blueprints or a technical drawing of the project displayed on the
screen. Feel free to use your imagination.

All the software that displays this stuff is not broken, and should not
be fixed. Instead, one should be able to easily disable screenlocking
when it gets in one's way. Just put the damn on/off switch on the
desktop. ;-)

Best, :-)
Marko