improving digital camera detection

[Pozsar Balazs]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 05:36:05PM -0500, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > ptp.fdi:
> >   If an USB device's interface indicates that it is an PTP device, then 
> >   it is a camera.
> > 
> 
> Yeah, but the question is really if gphoto2 supports it I guess.
> 
> Either way I guess it's sane to merge this property as the user will 
> learn from his digital camera app that it's unsupported (e.g. I think
> this is better than the UI just saying "unknown device").

I am sure that we should merge this property, because if an usb device 
has a ptp interface it _is_ a camera, and this property is not about 
gphoto support, but being a camera.


> > massstorage.fdi:
> >   This is a trickier one. If the USB device's interface indicates it is 
> >   a Mass Storage device, then we set the camera.access_method key to 
> >   "storage", BUT we do not set the info.capabilities or info.category.
> >   This way, if the device is marked as a camera somewhere else, it will 
> >   have the proper camera.access_method key/value pair.
> > 
> 
> This actually looks pretty clever; how about testing that the 
> property camera.access_method exists before setting it to
> storage?

I think we should not do that. Firstly, because camera.access_method may 
not be set elsewhere, secondly it would make it too dependant on the 
ordering. (this property would have to be set _earlier_ than this 
check.)


> > libgphoto2.fdi
> >   This is a bit ugly.
> >   Basically, it is a collection of the usb id's of various digital 
> >   cameras known by libghoto-2.1.5. (It is though a much better start, 
> >   than the single sony_dsc.fdi...)
> >   I have created the file using a little script, which I have also 
> >   encapsulated in the xml as a comment for later reference, so it won't 
> >   get lost.
> > 
> 
> I think we should have a file like this but it should be supplied
> libgphoto2, yes? As others have pointed out, it's pretty 
> straightforward to patch gphoto2 to give us such a file as
> it's pretty much the same as /etc/hotplug/usb.usermap or
> whatever it's called on a distribution. How about doing a patch
> for gphoto2 to generate this?
> 
> Reason is that I don't think it's wise to have this information
> in both HAL and gphoto2.

Well...
The .fdi file containing the ids _must be_ in the hal package _not_ the 
gphoto package. I want my cameras have the camera property in hal, and 
this must not depend on gphoto being installed on my system.

I agree, that syncronization would be easier if gphoto had an .fdi file 
to merge.

Moreover, think about that there might be cameras for which gphoto does 
not and will not have an id because it does not support it. HAL _should 
have_ ids for these too -- again, this property is about being a camera, 
and not about gphoto support.


-- 
pozsy
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