LCD brightness capability question

[Jan Jockusch]

Hello list members,

I don't feel very comfortable bugging all members with a possibly stupid 
question, but here it goes:

My tablet PC allows brightness setting via 
/proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness. It reports possible levels and 
current level.

I am aware that HALs autodetection cannot handle this because there are 
many machines with different methods of handling /proc/acpi/video.

But HAL doesn't rely 100% on autodetection, or does it? I thought the 
idea is to have many different sources of hardware detection 
information. Now, being an experienced programmer, I might be able to 
provide an external detection/notification/set-get program for my 
display which I would then install on this machine. Then, my 
gnome-power-manager would be able to handle my non-autodetectable, 
non-standard LCD display. I might do this, if I knew where to look for 
information on the right hooks, configuration files or API docs to write 
such a program.

Could any of you clarify? Or point me to docs to enlighten (and get rid 
of) me?

So far, LCD brightness control seems to be handled in one rather 
monolithic acpi.c file inside the compiled hald. I'm reluctant to patch 
in there. An external property/method addition seems much more 
appropriate to handle special hardware.

I'd be glad to contribute my work for other people with the same or 
similar hardware problems.

Greetings from Germany, and thank you for your efforts!

- Ján Jockusch

-- 
Ján Jockusch  -  Zauberkünstler             +49 (0)172 5256659
Horstheider Weg 231                         mailto:jan at jockusch.de
D-33739 Bielefeld                           http://www.jockusch.de