Creating Laptop Profiles

[D Canfield]

Bill Nottingham wrote:
> D Canfield (canfield at uindy.edu) said: 
>   
>> - require the tpb and other necessary packages for full hardware support
>> - include appropriate T43-specific config files for the tpb program
>>     
>
> Why is tpb needed as opposed to /proc/acpi/ibm?
>
> Actually, why isn't tpb written as a interface neutral wrapper
> around HAL?
>
>   
It may not be.  I've not yet learned enough about hal to have any clue 
if that's something I have the skill to get involved in.  I've not yet 
reconciled all the lists, but looking through thinkwiki.org, it looks 
like some functions can be accessed via tpb, others via ibm_acpi, and 
still others through yet another interface that just appeared recently.

If there's a clean way to handle this stuff in core, I'm happy to help.  
But I just don't know where to find info on how to approach this.  All 
the info I have on making buttons and special features work is via 
thinkwiki.  If someone can tell me what info needs given to whom, I'll 
do what I can.

The bit that took me the longest to figure out and that I'm not sure of 
a general case solution to, is the docking station issue.  When I dock, 
I have two monitors (or, I could just plug a second monitor into the 
back).  What I'm doing now is using "MergedFB" and "MetaModes" to define 
two modes: one has a 1400x1050 display on my laptop and a 1280x1024 
display on my monitor, and the second is a virtual/panning 
1400x1050+1280x1024 non-rectangular desktop for when my monitor isn't 
connected.  I then define one of the extra keys to run "xvidtune -next". 
This is the simplest method I could come up with to replicate the hotkey 
resizing that most laptops support under windows.  If there any approach 
we could take to make this easier for users, or is this too much of a 
corner case?

Thanks
DC