[Bug 1210823] Re: Convertibles: Switching between laptop mode and tablet mode needed

[Mario Vukelic]

I am currently setting up such a device, Asus ZenBook Flip 15, UX561UD from 2018, and the new Dell XPS 15 9575 2-in-1 will follow in a week or two. 
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ZenBook-Flip-15-i7-8550U-GTX-1050-4K-SSD-HDD-Convertible-Review.295860.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-15-9575-i7-8705G-Vega-M-GL-4K-UHD-Convertible-Review.301916.0.html

For the Asus, the generic laptop functions work out of the box with just
two small niggles (bugs are filed) and very little is missing to make
conversion features work out of the box. Rotation sensors and touch
works perfectly fine (this is on Wayland, X has fewer working touch
gestures but basics work too). What is missing is just:

1. Automatically deactivate touchpad when folding to tablet. (The
keyboard already turns off. The keyboard has a working key to deactivate
the touchpad, these two things only have to be wired together)

2. The new on-screen keyboard (from Gnome 2.28) activates automatically
(even when deactivated in Accessibility settings) when touching the
search box in the Gnome Activities menu and the applications overview
menu. I found no other place where it triggers, not even the first-class
Gnome applications like Web. It just has to trigger for every text entry
box and we are good.

3. Important and not yet mentioned: This device type has a tent mode,
typically for video watching. (It's great because most laptops have air
intake grills and speakers at the bottom, which sucks e.g. in bed. Tent
mode solves this nicely). However, in tent mode the stereo speakers swap
positions relative to the screen, so the stereo channels have to be
swapped. This is quite simple on the fly without touching a config file
by:

pactl load-module module-remap-sink sink_name=reverse-stereo master=0
channels=2 master_channel_map=front-right,front-left channel_map=front-
left,front-right

Then switch to it by:
pactl set-default-sink reverse-stereo

One can also switch in the sound control panel. It will disappear after
pulseaudio restart

I didn't come up with the pulseaudio stuff or try it out yet. Credit
goes to @ulidtko on https://superuser.com/questions/59481/how-to-swap-
stereo-channels-in-ubuntu

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1210823

Title:
  Convertibles: Switching between laptop mode and tablet mode needed

Status in acpid:
  Unknown
Status in acpid package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  See

  https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/client-1305
  -convertibles-and-touch-desktop

  Convertibles (like the Lenovo Thinkpad Twist) have two modes: Laptop
  mode where the desktop is controlled with the built-in keyboard and
  the built-in touchpad (or an external mouse) and tablet mode where the
  keyboard is folded away behind the screen and the desktop is
  controlled by the touch screen only.

  In laptop mode the built-in touchpad must be active and clicking or
  tapping a text input field should not pop up an on-screen keyboard,
  whereas in tablet mode the built-in touchpad should be deactivated so
  that the turned over laptop lid lying on the touchpad does not trigger
  mouse actions and tapping input fields has to pop-up the on-screen
  keyboard.

  This can be easily done by a an ACPI-triggered script, as described on

  http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installing_Ubuntu_12.10_on_Thinkpad_Twist#Automatic

  There are two files in /etc/acpi/events/ which assign the call of a
  script in /etc/acpi/ when the device is put into laptop mode or into
  tablet mode. The script should turn on the keyboard pop-up and turn
  off the touchpad when going into tablet mode and turn off the keyboard
  pop-up and turn on the touchpad when going into laptop mode.

  Some remarks:

  - The ACPI events mentioned on the linked site are for the Lenovo
  Thinkpad Twist, they can be different on other convertibles.

  - The script does not activate keyboard pop-up. One needs to add

  ----------
  if [ "$MODE" = "1" ]; then
      sudo -iu $user onboard &
  else
      sudo -iu $user killall onboard
  fi
  ----------

  to get this.

  - The script turns off the touch screen in laptop mode. This is not
  actually needed.

  - The script uses two functionalities which got removed in Saucy.
  First, /usr/share/acpi-support/power-funcs with the function
  getXconsole to find out who the user logged in on the desktop is
  ($user, the script runs as root), and second, xinput support for the
  touchpad (can also be a bug).  Perhaps one needs to use gsettings now.

  When finding a way to turn off and on the touchpad and a way to find
  the desktop user, one could easily update the script so that it works
  with Saucy. One also needs to find out the ACPI events for mode
  switching on the different models of convertibles.

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