HAL 0.1 release

[David Zeuthen]

On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 20:56, Joe Shaw wrote:
> The point is, having both category and capabilities seems to me like an
> arbitrary distinction.

Uhhmm.. yes.. but how do you determine the icon of your camera since it
has got both camera and storage capabilities? 

I think it should be a camera both when it appears in the storage list
and in the camera list. 

Note, this *could* be bad UI, but the point is really that one cannot
know this is a camera if you don't have category - alternatively we
could look at the first capability?

My initial point about having category/subcategory as well-defined is
that it provides the name space where to store (optional) well defined
properties that software using libhal might use. 
So for Category=Network, SubCategory=Modem we would have
Network.Modem.Initstring=ATZblah. Seth's networking profile work could
read this initstring when using that modem.

I suppose we can do this by just prefixing with capability name instead?
What capabilities could a device have? My guess

 Camera 
 AudioPlayer
 Storage
 Networking
 PDA

and maybe more: Bridge, Processor.. Is this stretching it?

Note that I'm just thinking out loud - I'm happy to let Category go, but
I think it's important to have some sane structure over where important
properties are stored. 

The progs (dial out scripts, display servers) and libraries (libghoto)
using HAL need to be able to find properties, so we need to document
capabilities and make sure it's reasonable extensible, otherwise we'll
have a mess if people go around and invent their capabilities. 

(Note we don't need to do everything at once!)

Thanks,
David