Using HAL for X Server Config Properties?

[Jeffrey W. Baker]

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 10:48 -0700, Johnson, Charles F wrote:
> Actually the X Server has to have quite a bit of knowledge of the
> underlying hardware, particularlly on the display side if you  want to
> take advantage of such things as HW Accelerated 3D.  The question of
> multiple X servers is an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered.  
> 
> One question however, why would adding a x11 properly any different that
> what has already been done in HAL for ALSA ??  
> 
> My real goal here is to investigate what should tbe the proper approach
> so that the X server can make use of the hot plug infrastructure of the
> underlying Linux system so that we can move away from manually
> re-configuring the X server every time a hardware change is made.    

A couple of things spring to mind, since you mention you hadn't yet
considered multiple servers running on a single machine.  If you have,
say, 8 heads hanging off one Linux box, in a library or similar setting,
you need some kind of system to map hotplug hardware to the display.  If
a user sits down and plugs a mouse into a USB port, that mouse should
work on that user's display only.  So the administrator needs some way
to tell the system that a USB hub, root port, or other topological
feature belongs to the user logged into some particular X server.

It seems that you will need plenty of cooperation from [XGK]DM, X
itself, hotplug, and HAL before this will work.

Of course, you could also tackle the single-user case first ;)

-jwb