backlight: Expose brightness curve type through sysfs

Backlight brightness curves can have different shapes. The two main
types are linear and non-linear curves. The human eye doesn't
perceive linearly increasing/decreasing brightness as linear (see
also 88ba95bedb79 "backlight: pwm_bl: Compute brightness of LED
linearly to human eye"), hence many backlights use non-linear (often
logarithmic) brightness curves. The type of curve currently is opaque
to userspace, so userspace often uses more or less reliable heuristics
(like the number of brightness levels) to decide whether to treat a
backlight device as linear or non-linear.

Export the type of the brightness curve via the new sysfs attribute
'scale'. The value of the attribute can be 'linear', 'non-linear' or
'unknown'. For devices that don't provide information about the scale
of their brightness curve the value of the 'scale' attribute is 'unknown'.

Signed-off-by: Matthias Kaehlcke <mka@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Daniel Thompson <daniel.thompson@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Lee Jones <lee.jones@linaro.org>

4 files changed, 54 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-backlight b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-backlight
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..3ab175a3f5cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-backlight
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+What:		/sys/class/backlight/<backlight>/scale
+Date:		July 2019
+KernelVersion:	5.4
+Contact:	Daniel Thompson <daniel.thompson@linaro.org>
+Description:
+		Description of the scale of the brightness curve.
+
+		The human eye senses brightness approximately logarithmically,
+		hence linear changes in brightness are perceived as being
+		non-linear. To achieve a linear perception of brightness changes
+		controls like sliders need to apply a logarithmic mapping for
+		backlights with a linear brightness curve.
+
+		Possible values of the attribute are:
+
+		unknown
+		  The scale of the brightness curve is unknown.
+
+		linear
+		  The brightness changes linearly with each step. Brightness
+		  controls should apply a logarithmic mapping for a linear
+		  perception.
+
+		non-linear
+		  The brightness changes non-linearly with each step. Brightness
+		  controls should use a linear mapping for a linear perception.
diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
index 5d7bb3024e13..fe75bb96a317 100644
--- a/MAINTAINERS
+++ b/MAINTAINERS
@@ -2907,6 +2907,7 @@ F:	include/linux/backlight.h
 F:	include/linux/pwm_backlight.h
 F:	Documentation/devicetree/bindings/leds/backlight
 F:	Documentation/ABI/stable/sysfs-class-backlight
+F:	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-backlight
 
 BATMAN ADVANCED
 M:	Marek Lindner <mareklindner@neomailbox.ch>
diff --git a/drivers/video/backlight/backlight.c b/drivers/video/backlight/backlight.c
index 5dc07106a59e..cac3e35d7630 100644
--- a/drivers/video/backlight/backlight.c
+++ b/drivers/video/backlight/backlight.c
@@ -32,6 +32,12 @@ static const char *const backlight_types[] = {
 	[BACKLIGHT_FIRMWARE] = "firmware",
 };
 
+static const char *const backlight_scale_types[] = {
+	[BACKLIGHT_SCALE_UNKNOWN]	= "unknown",
+	[BACKLIGHT_SCALE_LINEAR]	= "linear",
+	[BACKLIGHT_SCALE_NON_LINEAR]	= "non-linear",
+};
+
 #if defined(CONFIG_FB) || (defined(CONFIG_FB_MODULE) && \
 			   defined(CONFIG_BACKLIGHT_CLASS_DEVICE_MODULE))
 /* This callback gets called when something important happens inside a
@@ -246,6 +252,18 @@ static ssize_t actual_brightness_show(struct device *dev,
 }
 static DEVICE_ATTR_RO(actual_brightness);
 
+static ssize_t scale_show(struct device *dev,
+		struct device_attribute *attr, char *buf)
+{
+	struct backlight_device *bd = to_backlight_device(dev);
+
+	if (WARN_ON(bd->props.scale > BACKLIGHT_SCALE_NON_LINEAR))
+		return sprintf(buf, "unknown\n");
+
+	return sprintf(buf, "%s\n", backlight_scale_types[bd->props.scale]);
+}
+static DEVICE_ATTR_RO(scale);
+
 static struct class *backlight_class;
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_PM_SLEEP
@@ -292,6 +310,7 @@ static struct attribute *bl_device_attrs[] = {
 	&dev_attr_brightness.attr,
 	&dev_attr_actual_brightness.attr,
 	&dev_attr_max_brightness.attr,
+	&dev_attr_scale.attr,
 	&dev_attr_type.attr,
 	NULL,
 };
diff --git a/include/linux/backlight.h b/include/linux/backlight.h
index 0b5897446dca..c7d6b2e8c3b5 100644
--- a/include/linux/backlight.h
+++ b/include/linux/backlight.h
@@ -46,6 +46,12 @@ enum backlight_notification {
 	BACKLIGHT_UNREGISTERED,
 };
 
+enum backlight_scale {
+	BACKLIGHT_SCALE_UNKNOWN = 0,
+	BACKLIGHT_SCALE_LINEAR,
+	BACKLIGHT_SCALE_NON_LINEAR,
+};
+
 struct backlight_device;
 struct fb_info;
 
@@ -80,6 +86,8 @@ struct backlight_properties {
 	enum backlight_type type;
 	/* Flags used to signal drivers of state changes */
 	unsigned int state;
+	/* Type of the brightness scale (linear, non-linear, ...) */
+	enum backlight_scale scale;
 
 #define BL_CORE_SUSPENDED	(1 << 0)	/* backlight is suspended */
 #define BL_CORE_FBBLANK		(1 << 1)	/* backlight is under an fb blank event */