Griffin Powermate

[Phil Endecott]

Dear Experts,

I am painfully transitioning my system from an old HAL-less setup to a 
new HAL-powered one.  Some of you may have seen my questions about the 
Griffin Powermate on the xorg list.  I now need to get HAL to 
understand it.  Has anyone else used this device with HAL?

The Griffin Powermate is basically a USB dial.  See e.g. 
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powermate/.  USB HID has no 
problem with it being just a dial and single button and describes it as 
such; there is a kernel input event driver for it that returns DIAL 
events, and X works with it (at least, the old Xorg evdev driver worked 
with it, and the very-latest new evdev driver should work with it).  So 
HAL is now the only bit that's missing.

Currently, with my Debian HAL packages, I get this:

udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_77d_410_noserial_if0_logicaldev_input'
   button.has_state = false  (bool)
   info.addons.singleton = {'hald-addon-input'} (string list)
   info.capabilities = {'input', 'button'} (string list)
   info.category = 'input'  (string)
   info.parent = 
'/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_77d_410_noserial_if0'  (string)
   info.product = 'Griffin PowerMate'  (string)
   info.subsystem = 'input'  (string)
   info.udi = 
'/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_77d_410_noserial_if0_logicaldev_input'  
($
   input.device = '/dev/input/event3'  (string)
   input.originating_device = 
'/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_77d_410_noserial_if0'  (s$
   input.product = 'Griffin PowerMate'  (string)
   linux.device_file = '/dev/input/event3'  (string)
   linux.hotplug_type = 2  (0x2)  (int)
   linux.subsystem = 'input'  (string)
   linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/class/input/input7/event3'  (string)

My x11-evdev.fdi looks for capabilities = input.mouse or input.keys.  
Since this description only has capabilities = input,button it isn't 
going to match.

So I could hack the x11-evdev.fdi to detect this device.  But it might 
be better if there were an info.dial capability, or something like 
that.  I guess I would then add something in the "information" 
directory to match the product ID and declare it as a dial (right? - 
sorry, I'm completely new to this).

Any thoughts anyone?


Cheers,

Phil.