Update on networked FDI access?

[David Zeuthen]

On Sun, 2004-07-11 at 00:57 +0100, Jono Bacon wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> A while back Zenaan mentioned creating a network aware FDI source. I was 
> just curious if anyone on this list knew anything about it. It seems 
> fairly central to the whole HAL strategy.
> 

Sort of. I think it's kind of central to the "Making Hardware Just Work"
strategy; it'll help out with reducing the amount of configuration
required, e.g.

 o The .fdi should be able to tell if the hardware works on the system

 o The user will not have to write a .fdi file himself to
   o get the right icon (e.g. compact flash)
   o specify the device is a MP3 player and what formats it accept
   o etc.

 o Information in the .fdi file may be used to perform system
   administration tasks like loading the driver, although this is
   currently handled well in linux-hotplug for Linux 2.6 systems.

Another equally large and central piece is the UI for tweaking this and
submit a machine generated .fdi file to one or more hardware databases.
That's the gnome-device-manager (and an equivalent kde-device-manager,
xfce-device-manager etc.) pieces I've been talking about.

But both of these projects are outside the scope of HAL, however I'm
very interested in both since they are very connected to HAL and clearly
in the scope of "Making Hardware Just Work". The latter is clearly in
the scope of GNOME and should be discussed on utopia-list at gnome.org;
there's already some stuff there, and the former I think is OK to
discuss on this mailing list.

> The project also seems to be rather general and FDI files only seem part 
> of the scheme. I suggest we start simple with a specific approach to FDI 
> files. I could attempt to write some kind of web store for this if this 
> would be useful

I think it would be useful to think about this, yes, I'm curious about
how much progress Zanaan and co. have made. 

I think that to be successful such a project needs to be a lot more than
just a .fdi file store; the database behind it should contain enough
information etc. to actually generate the .fdi files; see my other mail.

Note that we'll be making some changes to the .fdi file format sometime
soon; I just need to morph into project management mode for a while a
post the new and modified TODO list I've been working on; I got some
great input at GUADEC. Stay tuned :-)

Cheers,
David




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