PDAs and HAL (Was: HAL and PPP interfaces)

[Andrei Yurkevich]

On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 15:16 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 22:22 +0300, Andrei Yurkevich wrote:
> > Ok, you almost convinced me, but that would be not the PDA but a device 
> > in a PC - either a serial port or a bluetooth/usb/whatever device. See, 
> 
> I still don't think this is a HAL problem, since the PDA isn't a device
> actually connected to the computer.

Well, in this case, neither are digital cameras and iPod-alikes. C'mon,
should the user really care about what the device really is and how the
device talks to the comuter? Isn't it what HAL is here for? 

> At least with USB we can see that
> there is some device on the other end, and hopefully with serial devices
> there's a way to figure out whats there too.

Yes. But in this very special case, we cannot see anything except that
there is a Pocket PC over there. Any more or less usable piece of
information you can fetch from a Pocket PC can *only* be acquired after
you've got a PPP connection.  Until then you only know that there is
something-nobody-knows-exactly-what is hanging around.

> The point is, the connection to your PDA is _NOT_ PPP.  The connection
> to your PDA is either bluetooth, serial, or USB.  That's HAL's job, the
> hardware.  You could certainly talk directly over USB to the device
> without PPP, but using PPP is a convenience.  HAL deals with the
> hardware, not the convenience.

Unfortunately I can't unless I re-implement the protocol in my callout.
Once again, there is *no* way to talk to a Pocket PC device other than
PPP.

I understand that PPP connections is not the thing you would like to
deal with in HAL, but it is just another protocol for connections that
some pieces of hardware provide and it is used to talk to
_hardware__plugged__into__a__computer_ here. I only propose to add some
means of knowing that some device, may that be a USB-serial device, a
bluetooth adaptor or an IrDA/Serial port or whatever else, provides a
network interface, that could possibly lead to some other piece of
hardware. I am not standing for monitoring every network interface out
there, but only those backed by certain physical hardware and those that
might lead to other hardware. 

cheers,
Andrei

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