[MPlayer-users] Release announcement: Screensaver Disabler

[Joshua Pollak]

Hello Fellow Mplayer Users:

I don't know about you, but I watch a lot of DVD's and movies, etc on Linux, 
with MPlayer. I also use a screen saver, but as far as I know, none of the 
major movie players has a way to disable the screensavers. I've seen people 
suggest that the screensavers should check to see if certain programs are 
running before activating, but that seems like a seriously backward approach. 
I also think it is unreasonable to expect movieplayers, etc to handle each 
screensaver specifically, and to me, having the a movieplayer jiggling the 
mouse in the background seems like a stupid thing.

Anyway, I don't believe there has been a drop in solution to this... until 
now. I wrote libssd, which stands for ScreenSaver Disabler. Just download, 
compile, and link with your favorite movie player (MPlayer) and your 
screensaver will be disabled for as long as the program is running, and 
re-enabled when it quits.

The library is a drop in, no source code changes are needed, and it currently 
works with KDE's screensaver and xscreensaver.

I've included a little guide on how to use it with MPlayer on my website, but 
to use it with another program, just include "-lssd -lstdc++" on the link 
line of the program, and you'll be all set. Of course, dynamic loading can be 
used for more control, I intend to create an optional header file for that 
later on.

If the MPlayer programmers think this is worthwhile, I would like to 
encourage them to include it with their source, or at least integrate it with 
the configure script.

The website for the software is:
http://www.offthehill.org/Projects/libssd

Feedback would be appreciated.

-Josh