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Subjects Author Language Messages Last message
[Locked] Screen Luminosity [Bug #153]
Guest English 14 Guest [Read]
20 April 2011 à 16:57

Guest, Friday 11 February 2011 à 23:25

On my laptop, I use Screen Luminosity applet with a value of .70 to give my screen more contrast and darker blacks. To adjust brightness, I use the Brightness applet of Avant window manager because the one provided in gnome panel would freeze my laptop during adjustment.

Since Gamma control is duplicated in the middle-click function of Screen Luminosity, wouldn't it be more usable to put real-time Brightness control instead on the left-click function? Also, I find it more useful if you can replace (or add) in the config 'Brightness to apply automatically on startup' with 'Gamma value to apply automatically on startup', that is if Brightness control will be used in left-click function. The middle-click adjustments: Gamma,R,G,B can easily make my screen unusable (very dark) even if I click 'X' that I need to reboot, so I avoid tinkering with these adjustments.

I've gotten the hang of using Cairo's systray placed vertical on the middle-left of my screen and Cairo main dock 'Lucido style' panel at the bottom. It's just beautiful and simple at the same time using the smallest memory footprint. I don't how Unity can possibly make me give up Cairo-dock. I do find the 'Move down' effect to hide the dock a bit strange. Instead of the dock moving down normally, the dock is being vacuumed towards the center.

The Brightness control in Avant is the only thing holding me back from not using Avant and going all Cairo-dock. I hope you can make some improvements to Screen Luminosity. Thanks.

fabounet, Sunday 13 February 2011 à 04:38


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
Instead of the dock moving down normally, the dock is being vacuumed towards the center

yep, that's it (with the openGL)

about the gamma, I personnally always scroll on the icon
you can set up the scroll speed in the applet's config if it's too slow for you.

PS: Escape and Enter can be used instead of clicking on the buttons

Guest, Sunday 13 February 2011 à 05:55

fabounet :
Instead of the dock moving down normally, the dock is being vacuumed towards the center

yep, that's it (with the openGL) :)

Unfortunately for me, I prefer 'move down' effect on non-openGL

about the gamma, I personnally always scroll on the icon
you can set up the scroll speed in the applet's config if it's too slow for you.

Me too. I use scroll-wheel. I don't find anything wrong with the default scroll speed in your applet. I was referring to the Brightness applet of the gnome panel that I find terrible and causes freezing during adjustment. The Brightness applet of AWN is so much better. I was hoping you could incorporate a real-time Brightness control on left-click action instead of Gamma because Gamma control is also available on middle-click action along with RGB adjustments. Aren't they the same Gamma control?

PS: Escape and Enter can be used instead of clicking on the buttons

I was commenting on how the adjustments available on the middle-click action has the tendency to mess up my screen even if I click on Cancel (X). I shouldn't get an unusable dark screen if I clicked Cancel since no adjustment should have been applied.

Guest, Sunday 13 February 2011 à 16:25

I take it your gamma control is the same as brightness control so there's no need for the latter.
http://www.photokb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/photo-digital/41156/brightness-vs-gamma

I'm proposing a simple brightness control (0-100) on the SL icon (instead of gamma). While scrolling on the SL icon, it would indicate (Brightness: ###) like Sound Control applet's indicator. By brightness control I mean similar to a laptop brightness FN key or gnome panel's and AWN's brightness applets where there is a safe boundary set, where 0 and 100 will still result in a usable screen, not overly dark or an intense white screen like how an advanced gamma control will produce.

The brightness control will also be on the left-click action and it will represent the 'basic' SL adjustment. The middle-click action will retain the gamma, r, g, b and will represent the 'advanced' SL adjustments. I hope I make sense.

With regards to the r,g,b adjustments turning my laptop screen unusable even if I select cancel, it must be my laptop's ATI Radeon HD 3200 not being compatible because it doesn't happen on my desktop screen.

Guest, Sunday 13 February 2011 à 21:28

Guest :
Unfortunately for me, I prefer 'move down' effect on non-openGL


+1 for a simple "move down" animation with no "vacuum" with OpenGL backend (if it's even possible )

matttbe, Sunday 13 February 2011 à 22:52


Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 12573
Yes it can be interesting if this applet could manager the brightness if it's supported by the hardware.

It can also be interesting to have a "redshift" like the Redshift application
Redshift adjusts the color temperature of your screen according to your surroundings. This may help your eyes hurt less if you are working in front of the screen at night. This program is inspired by f.lux (read here for the reason why I started this project).
It uses randr.

fabounet, Monday 14 February 2011 à 15:12


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
I didn't know there is a difference between brightness and gamma (in the sense of the xgamma command).
I guess you are talking about the hardware brightness of the screen ?
Matttbe didn't you find some dbus command to setup this parameter some time ago ?

matttbe, Monday 14 February 2011 à 15:20


Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 12573
Yes but it's maybe only for GNome desktop
But it can be interesting too! => http://www.glx-dock.org/bg_topic.php?t=4947

fabounet, Monday 14 February 2011 à 16:04


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
ah, indeed
KDE seems to have an equivalent (org.kde.PowerDevil)
what a shame there is no org.freedesktop interface for such trivial operations

Guest, Monday 14 February 2011 à 19:38

fabounet :
I guess you are talking about the hardware brightness of the screen ?


Yes, that's the one. The brightness applets of AWN and gnome panel would run on my laptop but not on my desktop, so these applets must be checking if there is hardware support for brightness control or checking the environment if the OS is running on a desktop or laptop/netbook.

I have another idea for the SL applet. Keep it the way it is on the desktop environment. If Cairo-Dock is running on a laptop/netbook, the SL icon will use a hardware Brightness control if supported, instead of gamma control. This will be automatic. [Brightness: 0-100%] is shown similar to when scrolling on PulseAudio applet. The left-click and middle-click controls will stay the same.

Guest, Monday 14 February 2011 à 20:33

Brightness applet is not included by default in AWN or in the Extras page.
I found it here in this forum: http://ubuntu-ky.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9783636
Scroll-down the page to the post by badenov. The file is brightness-0.1.2.tar.gz

It works perfectly well on my laptop. If you're interested to see the source code, it is available on the tar archive.

fabounet, Tuesday 15 February 2011 à 12:51


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118

I have another idea for the SL applet. Keep it the way it is on the desktop environment. If Cairo-Dock is running on a laptop/netbook, the SL icon will use a hardware Brightness control if supported, instead of gamma control. This will be automatic. [Brightness: 0-100%] is shown similar to when scrolling on PulseAudio applet. The left-click and middle-click controls will stay the same.

sounds good, thanks for the proposition

Guest, Thursday 14 April 2011 à 16:13

(Message added on the task #153)

!!! ! Don't forget the Anti-spam filter !!!

jesuisbenjamin, Friday 15 April 2011 à 01:18


Subscription date : 28 October 2009
Messages : 415
Guest :
Guest :
Unfortunately for me, I prefer 'move down' effect on non-openGL


+1 for a simple "move down" animation with no "vacuum" with OpenGL backend (if it's even possible )


I second that.

Guest, Wednesday 20 April 2011 à 16:57

xgamma + xbacklight = better screen brightness control

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Subjects Author Language Messages Last message
[Locked] Screen Luminosity [Bug #153]
Guest English 14 Guest [Read]
20 April 2011 à 16:57


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