Elektrified X.org released (was: X configuration paradigm, and a proposal)

[Jim Gettys]

David,

I agree with you and Kristian and I have started work, specifically on
the input system side to do exactly what you suggest.  Similar 
work ought to be done someday for the screens themselves (hotplug being
a reality even for screens; today with PCMCIA and PCI express is just
beginning to ship).

And yes, everything needs to be dynamic, rather than static, to the
extent possible.

However, we'll still probably need some sort of configuration system
for "non-standard" situations.  It may be something other than the
current config file will be desirable for this...

				- Jim




On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 12:43 -0500, David Zeuthen wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> I'm all for improving the situation with around auto configuration of
> hardware, but with all due respect, I think you guys are trying to solve
> the symptom, not the real problem. In my view you really want the X
> server to be able to export an API for software higher up the stack
> (GNOME, KDE, etc.) to configure the X server. You also want to
> reconfigure it while it's running. It seems to me, that putting in an
> mediator, for basically writing out configuration files, is not the best
> API for doing this. I could be wrong though. Ideally the X server
> wouldn't even touch hardware before someone used that API to say "Add
> monitor, Add input device, blah blah".
> 
> Anyway, with the right API in the X server (which would probably be
> exported through D-BUS), I should be able to write a daemon, let's call
> it gnome-input-manager, that runs in the desktop session as user davidz.
> This would also allow said daemon to disable the touchpad when I connect
> an external mouse or, for more fun, to disable it around intervals where
> I'm punching the keys. The reason you want this in the desktop session
> is that you want to query the locally logged in users preferences from
> e.g. gconf or whatever.
> 
> Just what I personally think.
> 
> Have fun,
> David
> 
> 
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