HAL and scanners

[David Zeuthen]

On Wed, 2007-01-03 at 14:22 -0500, Martin Owens wrote:
> The problem comes when there are very few properties you can search
> for in order t further identify a device, in such cases it might be
> wise to provide a plug-able feature (this includes passive ports too)
> where the list of possible identifications is recorded and it's made
> clear that the user can't use the device until it's been 'pluged-in'
> on the computer software side as much as on the hardware side. HAL
> could handle this in a very elegant way, providing not only the
> potential options but a way to let the client program know it's a
> 'undecided' device or port.
> 
> The way in which choices are held against the device would have to be
> done by port, passive or usb port which hal knows to an extream level.
> then at least the user choices wouldn't be lost on reboot.
> 
> > Parallel port (and serial port) support isn't really in HAL; for
> > Firewire, I believe you can match on existing bus properties provided by
> > HAL (though with krh's new firewire stack that might change a bit).
> >
> 
> Indeed, even though it is quite important to design a framework for
> passive devices; I am quite suprised the task has been put aside for
> so long.

Well, I've outlined already how such a thing should look like in the
context of HAL

 http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2006-August/005784.html

That would cover "passive ports" if you by that term means "a port that
needs to be manually configured".

     David