role of addon-input?

[pgf at laptop.org]

can someone comment on what the current hald-addon-input process
is designed to be doing?  i ask because it seems to not be doing
all that much in most cases.

addon-input has support for generating dbus "ButtonPressed"
events for a long built-in list of "special" (mostly multimedia)
keyboard buttons.  but if those buttons are generated by an input
device which is eventually handled by an X server, then they'll
never be seen, since the X server (its evdev driver?) uses
EVIOCGRAB on its input devices, effectively preventing anyone
else from eavesdropping on the device.  in other words, for many
of the input devices addon-input monitors, addon-input will never
receive any input events to handle.

i guess i'm just wondering if these dbus events (for the buttons
listed in addon-input.c) are a vestigial feature that should be
removed, whether they're still needed in some non-X11 cases, or
what?  perhaps they useful until the advent of EVIOCGRAB?

(addon-input also has support for some EV_SW switches, and to the
extent those come from devices without associated x11 drivers (as
on my thinkpad), they get handled in the code as expected.)

to be clear, i have no real cause for concern about any of this --
just trying to understand.

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org