tdeutils/kmilo/thinkpad

Thinkpad Buttons KMilo Plugin

Jonathan Riddell jr@jriddell.org, January 2004

A port of tpb ( http://www.nongnu.org/tpb/ ) to KMilo.

KMilo is a service for kded, the KDE daemon.  KMilo is new to KDE 3.2.
It allows plugins which interact with the special buttons found on
some keyboards and laptops.

This KMilo plugin reads the nvram used in IBM Thinkpads.  You need the
Linux nvram module ('insmod nvram') and to create a device node
('mknod /dev/nvram c 10 144').

Thinkpad R30/R31 models do not have a hardware volume control and so
require software volume control.  Other models need software volume
control only if you want a volume change step different from the
builtin value (14).  This required write access to nvram ('chmod 666
/dev/nvram') and could potentially damage the machine.

A KControl Centre module is included to configure the values including
whether this service is run or not (by default it is not).

INSTALL:

Download kdeutils source for kde 3.2 or newer.  Then compile as
usual starting from the kdeutils directory:

 make -f Makefile.cvs
 ./configure
 cd kmilo
 make
 sudo make install

Restarting kded is probably needed:

 kdekillall kded
 kded

HISTORY:

05 January 2004, Initial release, most things working

21 January 2004, Bug fix, stop it crashing if starting without kmix
		runningdisplay rounded min and max volume levels, pda icon for
		KControl module

24 January 2004, Stopped it start kmix on kded startup even when set not to run

28 January 2004, Added to KDE CVS

TODO:

 - Need a better icon for the KControl module
 - Test on machines other than my R31, which only has volume, 
   brightness buttons, light and 'Thinkpad' buttons
 - Add options for the 'Thinkpad' and other action buttons to do something (e.g. bring up Konqueror)
   For this sort of thing we really want integration with KHotKeys but I'm not sure how