From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Daniel Thompson Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 13:56:17 +0000 Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 2/4] backlight: Expose brightness curve type through sysfs Message-Id: <20190820135617.64urowbu2kwdynib@holly.lan> List-Id: References: <20190709190007.91260-1-mka@chromium.org> <20190709190007.91260-3-mka@chromium.org> <20190807201528.GO250418@google.com> <510f6d8a-71a0-fa6e-33ea-c4a4bfa96607@linaro.org> <20190816175317.GU250418@google.com> <20190819100241.5pctjxmsq6crlale@holly.lan> <20190819185049.GZ250418@google.com> In-Reply-To: <20190819185049.GZ250418@google.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Matthias Kaehlcke Cc: Thierry Reding , Lee Jones , Jingoo Han , Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz , linux-pwm@vger.kernel.org, dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org, linux-fbdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Enric Balletbo i Serra , Douglas Anderson , Brian Norris , Pavel Machek , Jacek Anaszewski On Mon, Aug 19, 2019 at 11:50:49AM -0700, Matthias Kaehlcke wrote: > Hi Daniel, > > On Mon, Aug 19, 2019 at 11:02:41AM +0100, Daniel Thompson wrote: > > On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 10:53:17AM -0700, Matthias Kaehlcke wrote: > > > On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 04:54:18PM +0100, Daniel Thompson wrote: > > > > On 07/08/2019 21:15, Matthias Kaehlcke wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 12:00:05PM -0700, Matthias Kaehlcke wrote: > > > > > > Backlight brightness curves can have different shapes. The two main > > > > > > types are linear and non-linear curves. The human eye doesn't > > > > > > perceive linearly increasing/decreasing brightness as linear (see > > > > > > also 88ba95bedb79 "backlight: pwm_bl: Compute brightness of LED > > > > > > linearly to human eye"), hence many backlights use non-linear (often > > > > > > logarithmic) brightness curves. The type of curve currently is opaque > > > > > > to userspace, so userspace often uses more or less reliable heuristics > > > > > > (like the number of brightness levels) to decide whether to treat a > > > > > > backlight device as linear or non-linear. > > > > > > > > > > > > Export the type of the brightness curve via the new sysfs attribute > > > > > > 'scale'. The value of the attribute can be 'linear', 'non-linear' or > > > > > > 'unknown'. For devices that don't provide information about the scale > > > > > > of their brightness curve the value of the 'scale' attribute is 'unknown'. > > > > > > > > > > > > Signed-off-by: Matthias Kaehlcke > > > > > > > > > > Daniel (et al): do you have any more comments on this patch/series or > > > > > is it ready to land? > > > > > > > > I decided to leave it for a long while for others to review since I'm still > > > > a tiny bit uneasy about the linear/non-linear terminology. > > > > > > > > However that's my only concern, its fairly minor and I've dragged by feet > > > > for more then long enough, so: > > > > Reviewed-by: Daniel Thompson > > > > > > Thanks! > > > > > > If you or someone else has another suggestion for the terminology that > > > we can all agree on I'm happy to change it. > > > > As you will see in my reply to Uwe. The term I tend to adopt when I want > > to be precise about userspace behaviour is "perceptual" (e.g. that a > > backlight can be mapped directly to a slider and it will feel right). > > > > However that raises its own concerns: mostly about what is perceptual > > enough. > > > > Clear the automatic brightness curve support in the PWM driver is > > perceptual. > > > > To be honest I suspect that in most cases a true logarithmic curve (given a > > sane exponent) would be perceptual enough. In other words it will feel > > comfortable with a direct mapped slider and using it for animation > > won't be too bad. > > > > However when we get right down to it *that* is the information that is > > actually most useful to userspace: explicit confirmation that the scale > > can be mapped directly to a slider. I think it also aligned better with > > Uwe's feedback (e.g. to start working towards having a preferred scale). > > IIUC the conclusion is that there is no need for a string attribute > because we only need to distinguish between 'perceptual' and > 'non-perceptual'. If that is correct, do you have any preference for > the attribute name ('perceptual_scale', 'perceptual', ...)? More a summary than a conclusion! There is a reason I have left a bit or space for others to comment on this over the last month (and a bit). To be clear my Reviewed-by: means that I believe that the kernel is better with "non-linear/linear/unknown" than without it and that I am comfortable the API isn't likely to be a millstone for us. Lee, Jingoo: Either of you care to offer $0.02 Daniel.