I notice when I'm reading that Workrave tends to treat me as inactive, so I can
read for quite a while before it makes me actually take a break (if it does) - I
tried setting preferences to not record my inactivity but this is a bit of a
hassle to do every time. It would be cool if there was some functionality so
that breaks stay the same while reading.

Hi,

I'm not sure how you envision this being implemented. Right now, if your work is
mostly typing and/or mousing, you use activity detection, and if your work is
mostly reading, you ignore activity. I'm not sure how workrave would detect what
you are currently doing. I don't think it is feasible to check for scrollbar
activity and/or pgup pgdn keys.

I once proposed to add webcam support to check whether or not you are behind
your desk, but so far noone volonteered.

I just meant to have a setting in Preferences to alter the amount of time that
Workrave waits before it starts considering you inactive. Right now it seems to
be at about 5 or 10 seconds. When I was reading I could increase it, so that it
would go for 30 seconds or a minute (I'm not sure how often I hit the down key)
before it considers me inactive and starts resetting my micro-break.

This used to be configurable. At one point it was removed from the gui, but
could still be changed using regedit or gconf or whatever. But now, I can't find
the appropriate keys.

Help?

On windows you can use regedit to alter
"KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Workrave\monitor\idle" 

On Unix, use gconf-editor to chance "apps/workrave/monitor/idle" 

This value represent the number of milliseconds you have to be idle before
workrave decides you are actually idle. By default, this value is set to 5000. 
Change at you own risk.... Values above 30000 will cause problems!