Bug 230888

Proposed patch: http://reviewboard.kde.org/r/4810/

Copy-n-paste from my comments to the review request after aseigo commented that there was no logical link between scrolling on the battery and the brightness changing:

Scrolling over an indicator icon suggests changing the primary function of that indicator, so scrolling over the battery suggests to me changing the Power Profile.  Progressively switching from one profile to the next as the user scrolls would not be a good thing, so scrolling would just show a pop-up with a list of all the profiles with a highlight around the selection that the scrolling would move, then once the scrolling stops after a slight delay the profile would switch.

For easily changing the brightness I would suggest a new Screen Brightness plasmoid in kdebase that works like the Volume plasmoid.  It would display the fairly standard sunshine icon that you can scroll over, with the sun's ray changing in size accordingly and clicking on it would pop-up a slider.  Bonus points for integrating the NVDimmer screen brightness functionality, although that probably needs to be done further down the stack in Solid.

It always seemed a little strange to me to have the screen brightness slider and sleep and hibernate buttons in the battery/power management plasmoid pop-up, it's not really obvious to users and trying to use any of them was always 2-3 clicks away when 1-2 would be better.  The battery should be purely about power profile management.  With a separate brightness plasmoid, and the lock plasmoid now also providing the sleep/hibernate buttons, the battery pop-up on click could be simplified to just choosing the Power Profile using the same pop-up as the scrolling action suggested above.  I think this would give the indicators a more consistent look-and-feel, and work better for the mobile/netbook containments.  Tying it all together would be an 'Add Panel' profile for 'Laptop' that includes the battery and brightness plasmoids and the lock plasmoid with the sleep/hibernate buttons enabled, then on plasma first run try make an intelligent choice between using the normal default Desktop panel profile or the Laptop profile.

*** Bug 251183 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 266723 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

(In reply to comment #2)
> Copy-n-paste from my comments to the review request after aseigo commented that
> there was no logical link between scrolling on the battery and the brightness
> changing:
> 
> Scrolling over an indicator icon suggests changing the primary function of that
> indicator, so scrolling over the battery suggests to me changing the Power
> Profile.  Progressively switching from one profile to the next as the user
> scrolls would not be a good thing, so scrolling would just show a pop-up with a
> list of all the profiles with a highlight around the selection that the
> scrolling would move, then once the scrolling stops after a slight delay the
> profile would switch.
> 
> For easily changing the brightness I would suggest a new Screen Brightness
> plasmoid in kdebase that works like the Volume plasmoid.  It would display the
> fairly standard sunshine icon that you can scroll over, with the sun's ray
> changing in size accordingly and clicking on it would pop-up a slider.  Bonus
> points for integrating the NVDimmer screen brightness functionality, although
> that probably needs to be done further down the stack in Solid.
> 
> It always seemed a little strange to me to have the screen brightness slider
> and sleep and hibernate buttons in the battery/power management plasmoid
> pop-up, it's not really obvious to users and trying to use any of them was
> always 2-3 clicks away when 1-2 would be better.  The battery should be purely
> about power profile management.  With a separate brightness plasmoid, and the
> lock plasmoid now also providing the sleep/hibernate buttons, the battery
> pop-up on click could be simplified to just choosing the Power Profile using
> the same pop-up as the scrolling action suggested above.  I think this would
> give the indicators a more consistent look-and-feel, and work better for the
> mobile/netbook containments.  Tying it all together would be an 'Add Panel'
> profile for 'Laptop' that includes the battery and brightness plasmoids and the
> lock plasmoid with the sleep/hibernate buttons enabled, then on plasma first
> run try make an intelligent choice between using the normal default Desktop
> panel profile or the Laptop profile.

From one point of view you are right, from another you are wrong.
If you press left mouse button on battery icon, there will be displayed window with actual profile, and brightness. 
While profiles are list of profiles, where each profile is a set of settings, 
the brightness is pure value which can be incremented and decremented. 
And therefore, the intuitive way to control them should be:
- the wheel to control the brightness
- right mouse button to allow quick selection of profile from the menu.

There was made by someone comparison to volume change using the wheel over mixer icon. If we follow your way, the wheel should change for example controlled stream via mixer instead of volume, and I think it is wrong.

From comment from John Layt:
Aaron's already said no. 
and the current maintainer of the plasmoid says no.

Closed.