Bug#467264: g-p-man: 'on battery' config interacts with 'on AC' settings - severity broken

[Eddy Petrișor]

severity 467264 important
forward 467264 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=530346
tags 467264 upstream
thanks

I installed Debian Lenny on another laptop, a MSI PR200WX-058EU and I
can see all these issues.


Some of these issues are actually distinct issues in upstream, but I
am not sure if it would make sense to clone this bug so many times:

---------------------------------
Overrides user custom brightness levels in relation to dimming:
---------------------------------
Bug 478128 – Desyncronisation with current brightness settings and g-p-m
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478128
Bug 483143 – Brightness not restored to previous value on leaving idle...
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483143

---------------------------------
Overrides user custom brightness levels in relation to power source
changes (AC/battery):
---------------------------------
Bug 335673 – should remember brightness settings when changed by the user
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335673

---------------------------------
G-P-M calculates some levels for the brightness and the user's changes
are thrown away on the first occasion
---------------------------------
Bug 335673 – should remember brightness settings when changed by the user
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=335673


2008/6/29 Eddy Petrișor <eddy.petrisor at gmail.com>:
>> On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 10:31:24AM +0300, Eddy Petri??or wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  looking at power preferences for AC and I set it to 100%. To my
>>>>>>  surprise,
>>>>>> the brightness changed.
>>>
>>> This is again visible on this  Asus laptop (not the same as the
>>> initial laptop for which I reported). Still, the slider now works in
>>> the right direction.
>>>
>
>>>>>> While on battery:
>>>>>> - moving the AC slider changes brightness
>>>>
>>>> no longer happens
>>>
>>> Now it does.
>>>

Reproducible on yet another laptop, a MSI PR200WX-058EU.

>>>> There isn't anymore a battery slider?!!??!? WTF?
>>>> Is this a GNOME usability "improvement"?
>>>
>>> This is still broken.
>>
>> What gnome-power-manager does these days is that you configure the AC
>> brightness and you can indicate whether or not to dimm in battery mode. So
>> when

BTW, that dim stuff has changed meaning lately and now in the
interface there seems to be one dim checkbox for AC and one for
battery.

The gauge that disappeared in the battery tab is another issue.

> This is broken, since on battery mode, on that ASUS the dimming was taken to
> the half of the brightness level, and there's no control on the default
> brightness level on battery.
>
> The laptop lost about 20-30 minutes of battery life just because I (the
> user) NO LONGER have the possibility to control the default brightness
> level. If I could have done this, I would have chosen the minimum brightness
> level, BUT, NO, GNOME guys think they are able to choose for me.
>
>> you change the AC setting it's normal although confusing that the display
>> brightness changes as a result of that.
>
> That is brain dead. AC settings shouldn't have to do *ANYTHING* with battery
> ones. And there is a good reason for that: I don't want those two profiles
> to interfere with each other.
>
> I can even give myself as a real example where you'd want the battery
> brightness default to be brighter than the AC setting:
> - at home, sometimes my eyes get tired and I prefer the brightness to turn
> down a notch or two, to ease on my eyes
> - I often comute by train, but at the hour I comute, usually the sun is
> close to the horizon (either morning, or close to sun set), so I usually use
> the brightest level when on battery, since I am usually in that situation,
> when that happens.
>
>
> There's even more reason to bring back the battery slider (when using "Dim
> display when idle"): when the laptop remains idle for a while, it "dimms
> down" to the "automatically computed best level", which usually means that
> it will actually bring the brightness up, or mess up with the level that was
> ajusted by the user manually, from the keyboard.  This is also *very* wrong
> (if English allows such and expression).
>

>> and forward this as UI confusing issue to upstream, do you agree? As in
>> the
>
> ... and, no, this is definetly NOT a UI issue, but a functionalty issue.
> Battery and AC brightness levels shouldn't be connected in *ANY* way.

I can't stress enough, even if it might make sense at first glance
that battery should be below AC by default, it is not nothing more
than that, a default. Also, if my default level for battery is by
default below the AC one, that shouldn't mean that the brightness on
battery can't reach 100%, if so desired.

-- 
Regards,
EddyP
=============================================
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" A.Einstein