> On Feb. 10, 2015, 10:01 a.m., Mark Gaiser wrote:
> > I'm not quite sure if a user wants to see a warning message at all.
> > When i use my notebook in a dark environment i usually put the brightness
> > all the way down (depending on the notebook).
>
> Kai Uwe Broulik wrote:
> As I stated above, "all the way down" can mean "completely off", which I
> wouldn't expect as a user. I've never seen any other device that does that,
> apart from some black and white seven-segment display calculators.
>
> Mark Gaiser wrote:
> Then it's device specific even!
> - My notebook: all the way down = still visible
> - My macbook: all the way down = off
>
> Can you detect that?
>
> You message does make sense if the lowest step = off. It doesn't if the
> lowest step is still on.
>
> Martin Klapetek wrote:
> Note that this is only for when you are dragging it by mouse - if you
> drag it all the way down and your screen goes black, there's no way to
> recover if your keys don't work. If your keys work and stuff, you probably
> never use the slider, so this for a minority of users. It's the same reason
> we ask confirmation when deleting a file.
>
> Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Wait wait wait wait... Could it be that we've come up with an overly
> complex solution to a rather simple problem?
> Actually, those devices which turn the backlight off at 0% brightness are
> the only ones doing it _right_. I always found it very weird when my screen
> brightness OSD said "0%" but I could still see things. 0% brightness means
> zero brightness means _dark_.
> So why should the user even be able to set the brightness to 0% anyway?
> Since turning off the backlight without turning off the screen doesn't
> make sense practically, there just should be no way for the user to set the
> brightness to 0%, period.
> So let the slider start at 1% and don't allow the brightness to go zero
> neither via power management nor via brightness keys.
> That solves two problems: Accidentally setting to zero _and_ that
> semantic bullshit of "0% brightness but I can still see stuff".
>
> Martin Klapetek wrote:
> > So why should the user even be able to set the brightness to 0% anyway?
>
> To save battery time when the screen is not needed *right now*, perhaps?
> I quite often compile things on my laptop when on battery, this can take up
> to 5 minutes and it's already quite a battery drainer, why the screen
> backlight should help it when it's not needed? I listen to music while
> cooking, screen backlight not needed. Etc etc.
>
> > So let the slider start at 1% and don't allow the brightness to go zero
> neither via power management nor via brightness keys.
>
> I disagree there. It's a hardware design after all, there's no reason the
> software couldn't/shouldn't take advantage of that. Also setting it to 1%
> does not really make a difference (not on my laptop at least), it's so dark
> it's useless, so I'd have to be higher, like 5% or 10%, which is...weird, I
> think.
>
> Mark Gaiser wrote:
> Quote: "So let the slider start at 1% and don't allow the brightness to
> go zero neither via power management nor via brightness keys."
>
> Please, no! I don't really care if 0% is a hardware flaw or design. We
> apparently are stuck with the fact that we have hardware behaving
> differently. The software should not limit prevent me to use my hardware at
> it's full capacity. If 0% in my case is still visible then so be it and that
> should be allowed just fine. If you forbid this then i expect quite some bug
> reports for that will flow in.
>
> If you want 0% to be off then you should buy hardware that obeys that.
>
> Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > To save battery time when the screen is not needed right now, perhaps?
>
> Turning the screen off when it's not in use is a perfectly useful thing
> to do, but that is _not_ what a brightness slider is for. The brightness
> slider is there to allow users to set the optimum brightness for their
> current surroundings.
> Check out your mobile phone or tablet. Regardless of which OS it runs, I
> am very confident that pushing the slider all the way to the left will _not_
> turn off the backlight.
>
> With a sensible power setting, the screen will turn off after some idle
> period when on battery anyway. If we want to allow the user to turn it off
> manually, there should be a keyboard shortcut for it. It _must not_ be a
> button in the GUI, because then there would be now way to turn it on again
> because you could not see it.
>
> Turning off the screen via brightness slider doesn't only have the
> problem this patch is supposed to solve, but also the disadvantage that you
> have to find your optimal brightness setting again afterwards. If the screen
> is turned off by a shortcut or via power management, it should return to the
> previous brightness setting again after it's turned on again.
>
> > Also setting it to 1% does not really make a difference (not on my
> laptop at least), it's so dark it's useless, so I'd have to be higher, like
> 5% or 10%, which is...weird, I think.
>
> That's why other OSes display percentages but only graphical
> representations of relative britghness. Which makes sense given that the same
> percentage of brightness means very different things with different hardware.
Btw. sometimes it's (just) a driver issue, if you're on Intel, try adding
```
Section "Device"
Driver "intel"
Option "Backlight" "intel_backlight"
EndSection
```
to your xorg.conf (or equivalent), then you should get 0% == backlight off.
Similar is with nvidia binary, that requires
```
Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
```
- Martin
-----------------------------------------------------------
This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/122505/#review75756
-----------------------------------------------------------
On Feb. 9, 2015, 11:25 p.m., Kai Uwe Broulik wrote:
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/122505/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> (Updated Feb. 9, 2015, 11:25 p.m.)
>
>
> Review request for Plasma and KDE Usability.
>
>
> Repository: plasma-workspace
>
>
> Description
> -------
>
> Some graphics drivers, notably Intel, turn off the backlight completely when
> brightness reached zero, which is also in the spec (0 = off, 1 = very dim)
> but imho that's unexpected. To prevent the user from accidentally turnign the
> screen off, especially when keyboard brightness controls don't work, which
> sadly still happens quite often, the slider breaks free from the user's drag
> (by becoming disable for two (perhaps 1 is enough?) seconds, so we also catch
> the mouse wheel case) and displays a warning (which stays there until screen
> brightness is dialed up again).
>
>
> Diffs
> -----
>
> applets/batterymonitor/package/contents/ui/BrightnessItem.qml 546ab58
> applets/batterymonitor/package/contents/ui/PopupDialog.qml a2acf31
>
> Diff: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/122505/diff/
>
>
> Testing
> -------
>
> Works pretty well, I just realized I forgot the mousewheel-on-trayicon case.
> Also, I'm open to wording suggestions since it sounds more like "we suck,
> sorry about that". (Note in the screenshot I used the mouse wheel, hence the
> displayed 4% rather than 5)
>
>
> File Attachments
> ----------------
>
> Screenshot
>
> https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/media/uploaded/files/2015/02/09/8b585088-e33e-4862-9c46-207d06f566f1__dimwarning.png
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kai Uwe Broulik
>
>
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