Unifying Web and GUI Prefs

Currently the Web and GUI prefs interfaces control the same set of prefs (with some exceptions, see below) but describe them differently. For example, web prefs say

Suspend work while computer is in use?

While the GUI says

Computing allowed while the computer is in use

This different creates confusion among volunteers. It would be good to unify the description of prefs between Web and GUI.

The two approaches could be called "negative" (when not to compute) and "positive" (when to compute) respectively.

Negative:

Compute all the time, except when the computer is in use, OR the CPU load is > .25, OR the time is between 9:00 and 17:00.

Positive:

Compute whenever the computer is not in use AND the CPU load is < .25 AND the time is between 17:00 and 9:00.

Which is clearer and more intuitive? It's kind of a toss-up, except that I think that it's more natural to express time-of-day and time-of-week prefs positively. That's how it's stored in the DB, and it would be a pain to invert it in the UI. So I lean slightly toward positive.

Whichever way we choose, we need to say things precisely. The current GUI wording (positive) is imprecise in two ways:

• It doesn't explicitly say whether computing is allowed when the computer is not in use.
• Saying that computing is allowed whenever the computer is in use is not necessarily true; other preferences might disallow computing.

More precise wording would be:

• Run CPU tasks when all the following hold:
  • [x] the computer is plugged in, not running on batteries (laptops only)
  • [x] the computer is idle
  • the time of day is between X and Y
  • other CPU usage is less than X%
• Run GPU tasks if the above conditions hold, and
  • [x] the computer is idle [this can be disabled if the CPU idle setting is set]
• "Idle" means no mouse or keyboard input in last X minutes

Negative prefs would look like:

• Run tasks all the time except when
  • [x] the computer is on batteries (laptops only)
  • [x] the computer is in use
  • the time of day is not between X and Y
  • other CPU usage is greater than X%
• In addition, don't run GPU tasks when
  • [x] the computer is in use (disable if the above "computer in use" is set)
• "In use" means mouse or keyboard input in last X minutes