Bug 343962 - Add option to disable Backlight OSD
Summary: Add option to disable Backlight OSD
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: Powerdevil
Classification: Plasma
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: 5.2.0
Platform: Arch Linux Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Development Mailing List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2015-02-09 12:13 UTC by hipersayan_x
Modified: 2017-01-08 15:57 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
OSD covering a full screen video (597.26 KB, image/png)
2015-02-09 12:13 UTC, hipersayan_x
Details
Patch to enable/disable OSD in git master branch (3.06 KB, patch)
2015-02-09 18:29 UTC, hipersayan_x
Details
kcmshell5 powerdevilglobalconfig with the option added (36.36 KB, image/png)
2015-02-09 18:31 UTC, hipersayan_x
Details

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Description hipersayan_x 2015-02-09 12:13:43 UTC
Created attachment 90990 [details]
OSD covering a full screen video

Its freaking annoying when I watching a full screen video and I want to change the backlight level, and the OSD covers the subtitles and the most important part of a film scene.

KDE carried with this problem for many years since 4.x version releases, but previous OSD at least was not so annoying, so please add an option to disable this "feature".
Comment 1 Martin Klapetek 2015-02-09 12:21:33 UTC
Thanks for the report.

(just btw, when filing a bug, being nice and leaving out snarky comments usually works better)

I was wondering this the other day - can the OSD know there's a fullscreen window above? We /could/ offer a smaller version of the OSD in that case? Or shorter timeout? Martin?
Comment 2 hipersayan_x 2015-02-09 12:35:35 UTC
> (just btw, when filing a bug, being nice and leaving out snarky comments
> usually works better)
Ok, sorry for that, but this is a real a problem for people who watch movies on a laptop.

> I was wondering this the other day - can the OSD know there's a fullscreen
> window above? We /could/ offer a smaller version of the OSD in that case? Or
> shorter timeout? Martin?
Offering a smaller version doesn't solves the problem, just reduces it. Kmix used to have the same problem some time ago and the developers added that option, and that solved the problem.
Comment 3 Martin Flöser 2015-02-09 12:51:36 UTC
(In reply to Martin Klapetek from comment #1)
> I was wondering this the other day - can the OSD know there's a fullscreen
> window above?

yes it could know it: get active window, check whether it's fullscreen. But this wouldn't work if the video player is not active (e.g. multiple screens) or if the video player sucks (using override redirect window).

Personally I think we should neither adjust the representation nor add a config option for it. We had quite some discussions about it and decided that the proper layer for the osd is to be on top of everything including playing videos. We will never be able to please everyone. I think it's totally valid to show the OSD on top of a playing video when changing the backlight.
Comment 4 Kai Uwe Broulik 2015-02-09 14:29:39 UTC
I'm sorry but it was a conscious decision to show the OSD ontop of everything and I went through a lot of trouble to make that happen.
Comment 5 hipersayan_x 2015-02-09 18:29:35 UTC
Created attachment 90994 [details]
Patch to enable/disable OSD in git master branch

This patch adds an option to enable or disable the OSD in **kcmshell5 powerdevilglobalconfig**, OSD is enabled by default.
This patch is for the git master repository.
Comment 6 hipersayan_x 2015-02-09 18:31:00 UTC
Created attachment 90995 [details]
kcmshell5 powerdevilglobalconfig with the option added

This is how the patch looks like.
Comment 7 Antonis G. 2015-02-09 20:23:24 UTC
This request makes no sense at all. Why would you want power management while you watch a movie in the first place?
Comment 8 hipersayan_x 2015-02-09 20:48:25 UTC
>Why would you want power management while you watch a movie in the first place?
I need to control the light intensity while watching a movie, for not burning (at all) my eyes. 
I don't want to disable power management, I just want to disable that specific OSD. This patch just maintains the normal/current behaivor, by default, but make it optional for people that don't want it. 
This patch adds just a few lines of code, without affecting in a negative way to KDE, so why not including it?
Comment 9 Martin Klapetek 2015-02-09 21:08:06 UTC
> This patch adds just a few lines of code, without affecting in a negative way to KDE, so why not including it?

It brings additional maintenance cost, it brings additional testing costs, it brings higher chance of things getting broken, leading to more bug reports etc etc.

It's not always "I need this feature, why not give it to me"; the maintainer/developer has a certain vision about the things he's creating and sometimes he just has to say no. And you should respect their opinion. It's impossible to always please everyone. That's just the way it is.

In my personal opinion, I would probably also reject that, I wouldn't want 3 billion options to allow every single combination of options...
Comment 10 hipersayan_x 2015-02-09 22:34:55 UTC
> It brings additional maintenance cost, it brings additional testing costs,
> it brings higher chance of things getting broken, leading to more bug
> reports etc etc.
Ok, then stop making programs just because you are afraid of computer crashing in anytime. Seriously, this is just a flag to disable an unwanted feature, there is no way it can crash nothing.

> It's not always "I need this feature, why not give it to me"; the
> maintainer/developer has a certain vision about the things he's creating and
> sometimes he just has to say no. 
I'm not the only person asking for this option, this come from long time ago:

https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=102145
http://askubuntu.com/questions/293105/how-to-disable-kdes-brightness-osd

> And you should respect their opinion. It's
> impossible to always please everyone. That's just the way it is.
Of course I respect your opinions, what I don't respect is you design decision on this very specific topic. And I believe that the way in which the the OSD is designed is really bad.

> In my personal opinion, I would probably also reject that, I wouldn't want 3
> billion options to allow every single combination of options...
Ok, then remove systemsetting and all it's components, it will made KDE easy to maintain it isn't? So you are basically arguing against one of the pillar of KDE, and the the reason why most people chooses it. I'm very disappointed.

These are my final words, I don't want to make this thread a flame, I just want to have my changes integrated to Powerdevil.
Comment 11 Kai Uwe Broulik 2015-02-09 22:48:56 UTC
The threads complaining about the OSD you have linked do not apply to the Plasma 5 world. In Plasma 4.x the OSD would show up whenever the brightness changed, for whatever reason, such as the system automatically dimming it. In Plasma 5, however, the OSD only ever shows up when the user manually changed the brightness. The former being the biggest annoyance which has been one of the main goals in the 5.x OSD design. The other one, "lightum", is using DBus interfaces that I do not intend to be used directly by third parties.
If, and only if, such an option is to become upstream, it has to be consistent across all the components using it (volume controls, keyboard controls, etc) and configurable in a central place, not every single one having an option to turn it off.
Comment 12 Antonis G. 2015-02-10 08:11:03 UTC
(In reply to Kai Uwe Broulik from comment #11)
> The threads complaining about the OSD you have linked do not apply to the
> Plasma 5 world. In Plasma 4.x the OSD would show up whenever the brightness
> changed, for whatever reason, such as the system automatically dimming it.
> In Plasma 5, however, the OSD only ever shows up when the user manually
> changed the brightness. The former being the biggest annoyance which has
> been one of the main goals in the 5.x OSD design.

This is very nice, it is indeed very annoying in plasma 4, but in 5 I have never noticed it. Thank you plasma devs!
Comment 13 Kevin 2015-06-27 22:45:05 UTC
I installed plasma 5 yesterday (it works great!), and I found this report while doing a google search to find out how to hide the OSD. If it isn't desired to have an option to disable the OSD, perhaps it could be made smaller (I don't think the monitor icon is useful) and it could fade away sooner? Should I make a different bug report? thanks!
Comment 14 Kai Stian 2017-01-06 21:38:12 UTC
(In reply to Kai Uwe Broulik from comment #11)
> In Plasma 5, however, the OSD only ever shows up when the user manually
> changed the brightness.

This is the point of not having the OSD, when i manually changes the backlight and/or the volume I know that I'm doing that and don't need some visual clue telling me what I'm doing since I know what I'm doing.
I will call that redundant information.
Comment 15 Martin Klapetek 2017-01-08 04:31:43 UTC
> I will call that redundant information.

For every one calling that a redundant information there will be someone calling that a missing information if it was removed. Sometimes redundant is better than missing.
Comment 16 Kai Stian 2017-01-08 08:00:24 UTC
(In reply to Martin Klapetek from comment #15)
> > I will call that redundant information.
> 
> For every one calling that a redundant information there will be someone
> calling that a missing information if it was removed.

Yes, that's true.

> Sometimes redundant is better than missing.

What I have always liked about KDE is it huge number of customization options. I don't mean the feature should be removed, but would like it to be customizable so the "redundant calling" and the "missing calling" users have the choice.
Comment 17 Kevin 2017-01-08 15:50:39 UTC
For those who are interested, you can replace OsdItem.qml and Osd.qml in
/usr/share/plasma/look-and-feel/org.kde.breeze.desktop/contents/osd/
to change or remove the volume and backlight OSD. I'm currently using
OsdItem.qml: http://pastebin.com/PZ69qucR
Osd.qml: http://pastebin.com/UxvrUpAF
This makes the OSD much smaller and disappear faster. It should also be easy to modify the files to remove the OSD.

However, the only downside is that you'll need to replace these files every time they get updated by your package manager. You'll also need to restart plasma for the changes to take effect
$ killall plasmashell
$ plasmashell &
$ disown # so that you can exit the terminal without killing plasmashell

Does anyone know if there's a better way of doing what I'm doing?
Or maybe a better feature request would be to add a
/etc/plasma/look-and-feel/
directory? Or does this already exist?
Comment 18 Kevin 2017-01-08 15:57:08 UTC
Oops, there is a better method! Create the following directory:
~/.local/share/plasma/look-and-feel/org.kde.breeze.desktop/contents/osd/

And then put the following files in it:
OsdItem.qml: http://pastebin.com/PZ69qucR
Osd.qml: http://pastebin.com/UxvrUpAF