
README
======

PBButtons is a program suite to support laptop specific functions and
make them available again under Linux. Basically it was developed to
support the special hotkeys of an Apple iBook, Powerbook or TiBook but
since version 0.5 the design has been changed to support all kind of
laptops or notebooks. 

                      (c) 2002-2006 Matthias Grimm

With this programs the keys for the display brightness, the volume of
speaker and headphone, the mute key and the eject key will do their job
as expected.

This package contains a PBButtons Client: PowerPrefs.

This client is a program to make pbbuttonsd fully configurable through
a comfortable GUI. This version of PowerPrefs will only work with
PBButtonsd >0.5.0. If some of the options doesn't seem to work, please
check if your currently running PBButtonsd server support them before
sending an bug report. PowerPrefs shows you the version of the currently
running pbbuttonsd server on its 'info-tab'.

Any configuration change becomes active when the 'set' button is
pressed. Up to this point any change could be canceled with the
'discard' button.

Some of PBButtons' options are for authorized users only (usually root,
but see 'userallowed' in pbbuttonsd.conf (5)). Those options will
be grayed out if started as normal user.

In contrast to former versions (0.3.x) this version is for configuration
only. Actions like 'GotoSleep' or 'Mute' were not handled by this
program. This could be better done by an extra tool.

REQUIREMENTS
============
To use this program, you need some additional parts:
1. an laptop or notebook supported by pbbuttonsd
2. the GTK and GLib libraries version 2.4 or later,
3. a running PBButtons daemon, named pbbuttonsd (>= 0.6.8),
   available as separate package,


COMPILE & INSTALL
=================
To compile this client the library libpbb.a is necessary. This
library is part of the daemon package pbbuttonsd and is available
as static library only. This may be changed in the future.

If you use precompiled packages you could skip this paragraph
except you want to develop your own PBButton's client.

The library should be installed in a common lib directory which the
linker already knows about. The header file must also be placed in
usual places. This will all done automatically during the daemon's
normal installation process. If you have got an precompiled package
of the daemon pbbuttonsd, please check if the package includes the
library.
   
For the other details about compiling and installing of PowerPrefs
please see INSTALL.


LEGAL NOTICE
============

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version
2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.


CREDITS
=======
Special thanks deserve some people who supported pbbuttonsd with
their own contributions:

  catalan translation  from David Riera <riets@ya.com> and 
                       Oriol Pellicer <oriol@elsud.org>
  spanish translation  from Rudy Godoy <rudy@kernel-panik.org>

This program wouldn't exists if not some people wrote other programs
from which I learned how special things worked. I can't name all of
them so I picked those out, whose programs I could call the 'parents'
of PBButtons:

  keyevd       from Joseph P. Garcia <jpgarcia@execpc.com>
  ikeyd        from Stefan Pfetzing <dreamind@dreamind.de>
  pmud         from Stephan Leempurg <sleemburg@jvc.nl>
  snooze       from Paul Mackerras <paulus@linuxcare.com> and
                    Stephan Leemburg <sleemburg@jvc.nl>
  trackpad     from Ben Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
  fnset        from Jimi X <jimix@watson.ibm.com>

Also thanks to all unknown developers, who make my little program
possible.


HOW IT WORKS
============

The daemon 'pbbuttonsd' gets its input directly from the keyboard event
handler. Consequently the keys are always active. It doesn't matter if
X11 is in front or if you are working on a console or which X11 window
has the focus. You can always use the hotkeys and get the appropriate
reaction.

The client contained in this package gives the user the option to
change pbbuttons' and systems behaviour on the fly.

Some parameters could be configured via the command line. Please read
the man page for details.

  Enjoy
    Matthias Grimm


