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  From: Edward A. Falk <falconer@best.com>
  To  : <apmd-list@worldvisions.ca>
  Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 15:22:28 -0800 (PST)

Re: Control apm

> On Wed, Dec 08, 1999 at 05:46:55PM -0800, Edward A. Falk wrote:
> 
> > Here is an executive summary of the ioctls I added to apm_bios.c:
> > 
> > 	...
> > 
> 
> Note that many of these are informational and should be reported in
> /proc/apm instead.  I'd rather control some of the others with sysctls
> (/proc/sys/...) but ioctls would be okay too.

I chose ioctls for three reasons:

  1) other functions (suspend/standby) were already implemented
     that way, so I figured I'd stick with that model.

  2) I know how to write ioctls.  I write ioctls for a living.

  3) What's a sysctl?  Never heard of it before.


Anyway, I downloaded the new apmd beta9 and took a good long look
at it, and it pretty much does everything I needed when I wrote my
patch, so I've abandoned mine.

I think the only features that I wrote that I would keep are the
"get capabilities" ioctl (which could be moved to /proc/apm anyway),
and the ability to read out the individual battery levels (which I
never got working on my laptop anyway.)

I do have one suggestion though:  Publish a formal definition
(perhaps in BNF) of the string from /proc/apm.

	-ed falk