XO BW mode (was Re: Guidance sought on collaboration techniques)

[Gary C Martin]

On 13 Feb 2009, at 17:28, Wade Brainerd wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Gary C Martin  
> <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> The below will switch to BW, but still leave the backlight on:
>
>        su
>        echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/dcon/output
>
> And to kill backlight and go to BW mode all at once:
>
>        su
>        echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/dcon-bl/brightness
>
> Hmmm, I wonder if there is dbus hooks for this for a less hacky  
> solution.
>
> Oh, cool - thanks!  Isn't there any button on the XO mapped to  
> this?  How is a normal user supposed to engage it?

It simply engages BW/reflective mode when you dial down the brightness  
to off. Alt-brightness up and Alt-brightness down on the XO get you to  
reflective mode (and back) in one strike. In normal use, colour mode  
is still quite usable (though not as crisp as BW) in bright sunlight,  
it's just that the colours desaturate as the reflected light gets  
brighter.

Note the backlight goes through the colour refractive screen magic,  
even in BW mode, so it's not as sharp as with the backlight 100% off  
and just using reflected light (though BW + backlight does still look  
slightly crisper than colour mode, to my eye, like sub pixel  
sharpening tricks on conventional screens).

--Gary

> -Wade
>