RFC: multitouch support v2

[Chase Douglas]

On 12/22/2011 07:15 AM, Kristian Høgsberg wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 1:45 AM, Chase Douglas
> <chase.douglas at canonical.com> wrote:
>> On 12/21/2011 09:34 AM, Tiago Vignatti wrote:
>>> From: Tiago Vignatti <tiago.vignatti at intel.com>
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Following Kristian suggestions, I updated the patchset with the following:
>>> - driver now accumulates input coordinates to send along touch_down
>>> - updated the protocol touch_down event with surface field, meaning the focus
>>>   surface of a touch device
>>> - compositor now uses a touch_focus pointer (self explicative), where it's
>>>   picked when the first finger is down; all further events go there until it
>>>   gets released
>>> - not doing pointer emulation for now; that will come next.
>>
>> Do we really want pointer emulation in the window server? I can tell you
>> from first-hand experience it's a nightmare. Toolkits should be updated
>> to handle touch events properly, with an option to receive touch events
>> and emulate pointer events for applications that aren't ready for touch
>> event handling.
> 
> I don't think we do.  I'm not 100% sure yet, which is why I want to
> focus on just the basic touch events for now.  I agree that since you
> have to port a toolkit to Wayland anyway, you can just do pointer
> emulation (if you must, real touch support is better, of course) in
> the toolkit when you port it.
> 
> The one thing that makes me not quite sure is that client-side pointer
> emulation won't be able to move the pointer sprite in response to
> touch point 0 moving.  And maybe we don't need that.  On the other
> hand, if the toolkit synthesizes enter/leave events in response to
> touch events, it's going to be confusing when the actual pointer
> enters a different surface.  It's also possible to make server-side
> pointer emulation a per-client thing, similar to what Peter did for X.
>  If a client subscribes to touch events, we don't do pointer
> emulation.

There's a niggle there. If a client selects for touch and pointer
events, it will only receive touch events. However, if a client grabs
touch and pointer events through a passive grab, the touch grab is
handled first, and then the pointer grab second if the touch grab is
rejected.

I don't know wayland's protocol yet, but shouldn't enter/leave events
have some kind of device identifier in them? I would think that should
alleviate any client-side confusion.

-- Chase