[PATCH]: mtdev could be disabled at configuration

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:10:05 +0200
Benjamin Tissoires <benjamin.tissoires at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 9:41 AM, Pekka Paalanen <ppaalanen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:01:48 +0200
> > Benjamin Tissoires <benjamin.tissoires at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Pekka Paalanen <ppaalanen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > On Fri, 7 Jun 2013 12:11:14 +0200
> >> > Marc Chalain <marc.chalain at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> mtdev is not necessary on some device (desktop or set-top-box). For
> >> >> embedded solution the minimum of dependencies is required. "configure"
> >> >> accepts the --disable-mtdev option.
> >> >
> >> > Hi Marc,
> >> >
> >> > with this patch, if weston is compiled with --disable-mtdev, it looks
> >> > like it will still happily open multitouch devices, expose them to
> >> > Wayland clients, and feed them garbage or fail or whatever. Right?
> >>
> >> Hi Pekka,
> >>
> >> no. mtdev is a compatibility layer for converting very rare
> >> touchscreen using the multitouch protocol A into the mostly used
> >> multitouch protocol B.
> >> To my mind, only legacy devices (ntrig 0001 and few others) use the protocol A.
> >> So without mtdev, wayland will open and handle most of the multitouch
> >> screen happily.
> >>
> >> >
> >> > I think the proper approach is to change the configure option into
> >> > --disable-multitouch or --disable-touchscreen, which would not only
> >> > drop the dependency to mtdev, but also make Weston ignore all
> >> > touchscreen devices since it will not be able to handle them.
> >>
> >> Without mtdev, wayland should only ignore multitouch screen not
> >> presenting the ABS_MT_SLOT axis.
> >> Those relying on SYN_MT_REPORT do not provide tracking (which is done by mtdev).
> >>
> >> So my guess is that if you detect multitouch screens by looking at
> >> ABS_MT_SLOT, then everything will be fine whether or not you have
> >> mtdev:
> >> - multitouch B screens will correctly be handled
> >> - multitouch A screens will be processed as a single touch screen,
> >> which is not a problem because the kernel provides single touch
> >> emulation since the early days of multitouch. And if mtdev is present,
> >> then it will show the ABS_MT_SLOT axis, leading to the previous case.
> >>
> >> Bonus point, mtdev has not been updated since a long time, and is
> >> missing the bits allowing you to retrieve the initial per-slot states.
> >> And you may find useful to retrieve the current states when weston
> >> launches.
> >
> > Thank you for clarifying that, Benjamin.
> >
> > Does this mean that we need explicit single-touch support in Weston?
> 
> After giving a quick look at evdev.c, it appears that single touch
> devices are already treated in the same way tablets (with stylus) are.
> So, single touch devices are seen from weston in the same way they
> have been seen in Xorg since the beginning: as absolute input devices.
> 
> Then, it's just a matter of deciding whether we want to inform the
> client if the source of the event is a finger or a pen.

Right... except we do not support tablets at all at the moment. We miss
the whole protocol for tablets. Wayland (not just Weston) only has
support for touchscreens so far, in addition to keyboards and relative
pointing devices.

evdev.c's device type recognition is just a handful of ad hoc
heuristics for now, written only for touschscreens, keyboards, and
mice/touchpads, and trying to ignore everything else.

> > I don't think we have that yet. Everything touchy goes through mtdev,
> > which makes also real single-touch devices look like multitouch devices
> > except they never report more than one contact. Do I understand that
> > right?
> 
> evdev.c detects "touch" devices by looking at ABS_MT_SLOT. But mtdev
> does not transform single touch device into pseudo-multitouch devices.
> So I would say that those single touch devices are not treated as
> "touch" today.

Ok, so probably they would not work anyway atm.

Which means that dropping mtdev loses only some rare multitouch
devices, which do not advertise ABS_MT_SLOT, and hence will get
properly ignored. Right?

I wonder if single-touch devices get detected as touchpads. Depends on
if they have any keys, it seems. :-)

> > Marc, in any case, I think you should check that Weston correctly
> > ignores touch devices it cannot support without mtdev, as per
> > Benjamin's instructions above.
> >
> > Retrieving current state is a matter for another time.
> >
> 
> Oh yes. FYI, I still did not found the time to finalize the patches for Xorg :)


Thanks,
pq