workrave
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rcaelers
Countdown timer pauses after 7sec
Hello Again, Seems things aren't all working well after all. I noticed this morning that I wasn't getting Rest Break alerts (I've disabled Microbreaks and Daily Limits). When I mouse over the systray icon, I see the downtimer. Alternatively if i click the systray icon, the Timer Window appears. If I watch the Timer Window, the timer decreases for 7sec and then stops decreasing. If I mouse over the systray icon again, the timer starts to downcount again, but then stops after 7sec. Since this doesn't seem to be reported by anyone else, I assume it has to do with my window manger (fluxbox). All of the windows and systray icon seem functional, but the underlying counter seems to pause for some reason. I'm happy to help debug if someone can guide me. Thanks again for the software. I hope we can make it work here... John
This functionality is intended, though not that obviously documented. After 7 seconds of no mouse or keyboard activity, you are considered inactive. If you are inactive for as long as a break should be, the program assumes you already did your break and resets the timer. This prevents break requests when you are already away. You can turn this behaviour off by activating "reading mode".
#120 requests making this 7 seconds configurable.
Thank you for the tip Christian!
I do still see one complication, once a break has completed, the timer for the next break doesn't start until activity is detected. Even with "reading mode" enabled.
For example, if I get up and walk away from my computer for 8 minutes, when a 5 minute break starts, I don't want the time of the next break to be delayed by 3 minutes.
I have activities, meetings, etc, that I expect at specific times during the day. I configure the frequency and duration of the breaks to insure they don't occur in the middle of a scheduled meeting.
While reading mode is helpful, this really requires a setting to completely disable all activity detection. This would simply initiate the breaks after specific times for specific durations, regardless of keyboard and mouse activity.
Given that the deleterious effects of long hours are caused by the sitting, not the typing, I would argue that the use of activity detection is counter-productive to countering these deleterious effects. I may be sitting in the chair talking on a conference call for an extended period of time, this doesn't mean I want to delay my next forced computer break.
Most helpful would be a feature that allowed specifying breaks at given times of the day, as opposed to after a certain period.
Thank you for the clarification on reading mode!
On 11/7/21 11:25, Christian wrote:
This functionality is intended, though not that obviously documented. After 7 seconds of no mouse or keyboard activity, you are considered inactive. If you are inactive for as long as a break should be, the program assumes you already did your break and resets the timer. This prevents break requests when you are already away. You can turn this behaviour off by activating "reading mode".
#120 requests making this 7 seconds configurable.
Hmm. Not an easy issue. In general, all these functionalities assume that you are at your PC (active) or you walked away (break). Reading mode was made for cases where you look at your screen for a longer time but still want break reminders to make you walk away.
Now, staying with this concept, I do not really see a case where I walk away to take a break and then return and do not touch my mouse and keyboard but stare at my screen. Also, without the delay after a break, the amount of time until the next break would be reduced when I voluntarily take a longer break. That's probably why it has been programmed the way it is.
I think what you really want is something else anyway. Especially when you sit a lot while on the phone, you might want something that does not use your computer at all (like a fitness watch or a phone app). I bet there are also a lot of PC solutions available that are much simpler than workrave and just notify you in fixed intervals. On LInux for example a simple cronjob + something like gnome-notifications might already do, but you will find more help on that with a Google search than I could ever write down.
In any case, to keep the bug tracking clean, please close this issue as it is not a bug, and if you have a feature suggestion that fits the concept of workrave, feel free to open a new issue with "feature suggestion" in the title :)