KubuntuLaptopButtons

Summary

Use the Ubuntu laptop buttons infrastructure in KDE.

(Make this: a stand-alone laptop button daemon with a KDE GUI. Read comments Elias12 for explanation.)

Rationale

Many laptops and also desktops have extra feature buttons which handle power management, display controls and other features. These should work as well in Kubuntu as they do in Ubuntu.

Use cases

Masie has a laptop with suspend and brightness buttons, when pressing these buttons nothing happens and she doesn't know how to make them work.

Bob notices that all his laptop buttons work in Ubuntu but none of them work in Kubuntu which would otherwise be his preferred environment.

Daniel follows the complex kmilo thinkpad instructions to get his thinkpad buttons working, he has to enable nvram writing to get this to work but wonders if it is a security risk.

Scope

Specific laptops are the problem of acpi-support and hotkey-setup, this spec is for making sure KDE does the right thing with the output of hotkey-setup.

Design

KDE has KMilo, a kde daemon module for handling laptop keys. KMilo has plugins for different types of laptop and each plugin for KMilo works in different ways and has different abilities. With the abstraction provided by hotkey-setup we no longer need different parts of KMilo for each laptop. We will create a new KMilo plugin for hotkey-support.

Implementation

Our KMilo hotkey-setup plugin will run xmodmap on startup to map the xevents from hotkey-setup to X keys. We will setup global bindings in KMix, Konqueror, Amarok and KubuntuPowerManagement to handle volume up/down, play/pause, suspend/hibernate, screen brightness and web browser control. The KMilo plugin will also have global bindings for volume and screen brightness and will show its on screen display to give feedback to the user, it will get its values by querying KMix and KubuntuPowerManagement with DCOP.

The KMilo plugin will also have global keybindings to listen for the e-mail and web browser buttons, these will run the default application which the user can set in the normal KDE way. Other application buttons will run the default Kubuntu application.

The existing KMilo plugins will be moved to a new unsupported package.

Unspecified buttons such as the "IBM Thinkpad" button will be mapped to X keys which can be set to almost any action using khotkeys, a standard part of KDE.

Keycode

Keysym

Handler

229

XF86Search

KMilo run kfmexec for KDE's default search page

235

XF86MyComputer

KMilo run kfmexec $HOME

236

XF86Mail

KMilo, run default e-mail application

237

XF86AudioMedia

KMilo run Amarok

118

XF86Music

KMilo run Amarok

178

XF86WWW

KMilo run default web browser

no reliable standard

XF86Calculator

KMilo, run speedcrunch if installed else KCalc

no reliable standard

XF86Terminal

KMilo run Konsole

Keycode

Keysym

Handler

162

XF86AudioPlay

Amarok

162 (same as play)

XF86AudioPause

Amarok

164

XF86AudioStop

Amarok

144

XF86AudioPrev

Amarok

153

XF86AudioNext

Amarok

Keycode

Keysym

Handler

160

XF86AudioMute

KMix to change, KMilo for on screen display

174

XF86AudioLowerVolume

KMix to change, KMilo for on screen display

176

XF86AudioRaiseVolume

KMix to change, KMilo for on screen display

Keycode

Keysym

Handler

230

XF86Favorites

Konqueror

231

XF86Refresh

Konqueror

232

XF86Stop

Konqueror

233

XF86Forward

Konqueror

234

XF86Back

Konqueror

no reliable standard

XF86Go

Konqueror

Keycode

Keysym

Handler

222 (but also HAL?)

XF86PowerOff

KubuntuPowerManagement

223

XF86Standby

KubuntuPowerManagement

165

XF86Sleep

KubuntuPowerManagement

nothing

XF86ContrastAdjust

KubuntuPowerManagement

nothing

XF86BrightnessAdjust

KubuntuPowerManagement

Keycode

Keysym

Handler

204 (mac only)

XF86Eject

run eject

245

XF86Launch0

Help Key, launch KHelpCentre

159 (Thinkpad key)

XF86LaunchA

none, user can set with KHotKeys

241 (battery)

XF86LaunchB

none, user can set with KHotKeys

205 (HP presentation)

XF86LaunchC

none, user can set with KHotKeys

132 (Thinkpad Light)

XF86LightBulb

KMilo on screen display

Comments

Elias12

  • In order to make this thing successful I recommend to choose an approach similar to network-manager: A daemon running in the background and a KDE GUI to talk to it. Why? Because otherwise the point will come where you will throw away all your work and built a GUI for a daemon somebody else has written just like it was with knetworkmanager superseding kde-wireless-config or whatever it's name was.
  • The success of network-manager lies in the fact that KDE could use it's advantages eventhough it comes from the gnome community. Another example is dbus which will replace dcop in KDE4. Both nm and dbus could be used by anyone without having to install gnome. This freedom ensures a wide acceptance and potentially attracts a big community driving the development of the project.
  • On the contrary dcop did not survive since it was only available when installing all of kdelibs and all dependent packages (QT) as well.
  • Therefore I cannot stress enough, if you want to create something with sustained success, something long lasting, then split your project in a daemon and a GUI part. The daemon should exist as a seperate project and consequently as a seperate package with no dependency to KDE. This will make your work available for other desktops as well. Nobody will have to reinvent the wheel. And laptop buttons could finally be available even for puristic console users - I never understood why all the cool stuff should only be available for desktop users. The GUI would either be a subproject of the daemon in a seperate package or some time become an official part of KDE with a dependancy to the daemon package.

LukaRenko

  • if your laptop key is not properly mapped, please report more info on LukaRenko/Keycodes page.

AchimBohnet

  • (2006-08-17): using xmodmap to load the keys, breaks when keyboard layout are used in 'Regional & Language' settings. It uses setxdkbmap to load a map, overriding the xmodmap settings. Same would happen if one use 2 (e.g. us and de) keyboard layouts and switched then with ALT-CTRL-K or the systray icon. One solution may be to use XDB options to include the 'laptop keys' settings.

    • xmodmap wil be moved to Xsession startup and just after setxkbmap in kxrb - that way Ubuntu map will be always active -- LukaRenko 2006-08-20 11:11:18

  • Lots of applications have Favorites, Stop, Forward, Back etc functionality. The special keys should not be globally assigned to just one app. Instead we should modify the keybindings of the apps where assignment of XF86<action> makes sense. I assume, that at least some of the XF86<*> keysyms can be assgined as a second Keybinding to a KDE STDAccel and are then automaticaly available in all apps that make use of them.

  • Full screen mode: check that globally bound keys work also in full screen mode. I once used a tool (not kmilo) where e.g. Mute, etc. didn't work in full screen mode.

FergalDaly

  • The window used to display the message is far bigger than it needs to be which is very annoying if you're watching a video or something. Also there's no indication anywhere of how you might turn it off or change the behaviour.

KubuntuLaptopButtons (last edited 2008-08-06 16:27:41 by localhost)