Re: [PATCH v2] platform/x86: asus-wmi: Add keyboard backlight toggle support

[Andy Shevchenko]

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 3:25 AM, Daniel Drake <drake@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Andy,
>
> On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 8:46 AM, Daniel Drake <drake@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > > Some Asus laptops like UX550GE has hotkey (Fn+F7) for keyboard
>> > > backlight toggle. In this UX550GE, the hotkey incremet the level
>> > > of brightness for each keypress from 1 to 3, and then switch it
>> > > off when the brightness has been the max. This commit interprets
>> > > the code 0xc7 generated from hotkey to KEY_KBDILLUMUP to increment
>> > > the brightness, then pass KEY_KBDILLUMTOGGLE to user space after
>> > > the brightness max been reached for switching the led off.
>> > >
>> >
>> > Pushed to my review and testing queue, thanks!
>>
>> We found that GNOME's handling of the toggle key is somewhat imperfect
>> and it will need modifying before we achieve the
>> Up-Up-Up-off-Up-Up-Up-off... cycle that we are looking for.
>>
>> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-settings-daemon/issues/41
>>
>> In that discussion an alternative perspective was raised:
>>
>> Is it right for the kernel to modify the key sent to userspace, when
>> it is then relying on the specific userspace action of it changing the
>> brightness to the next expected level? (and this userspace behaviour
>> is not even working right in the GNOME case)
>>
>> Instead, would it make sense for the kernel to always report TOGGLE in
>> this case, and for GNOME to interpret toggle as simply "cycle through
>> all the available brightness levels"?
>
> Any comments on this? I am tempted to send a patch to just make this
> key always emit TOGGLE from the kernel given that we have a tentative
> agreement on implementing the brightness cycle within GNOME.

The patch is slipped to our for-next queue. We have about 1-2 weeks to
fix things there if the initial approach is not what you want.

-- 
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko