RFE: (Gnome) wide online / offline mode

[Soeren Sonnenburg <desktop-devel-list nn7 de>]

Hi all!

I would want to suggest a gnome wide online/offline mode which is not
just
application specific as, e.g., there is support for an offline mode in
evolution or epiphany but a more general solution.

The user should have a way to simply switch the gnome desktop in an
offline
mode (e.g. via an applet (which changes its symbol on click) and/or a
		cmdline program).

This way the following very useful things would be possible:

Think of a notebook user travelling regularly. Say he is a poweruser and
uses evolution for mail, gaim for chat, pan for news and x-chat for irc.
Every time he puts his notebook to sleep he either has to take care of
closing all apps / or put them in offline mode one by one OR just ignore
that they will start complaining when the notebook wakes up from sleep
about
all the lost connections / changed network settings.

As there is already a working network autodetection with
ifplugd/waproamd
and the ifupdown-{,roaming} scripts, the missing thing is a cmdline
program
that signals all programs to disconnect as quickly as possible and to go
offline when called with --go-offline-immediately and when called with
--go-online just put all apps into online mode again.

Also an option --go-offline or --go-offline-and-sync would be nice to
trigger e.g. email/news sync etc.

Ifplugd/waproamd could also be modified to signal network
{,dis}connects...

Any comments ?
Soeren.