GSoC project idea: input support for XCB

[Peter Hutterer]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 10:43:46AM -0400, Peter Harris wrote:
> On 2010-03-24 19:28, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 03:11:38PM +0100, Arnaud Fontaine wrote:
> >> I have  already updated  SummerOfCodeIdeas wiki page  about that  but as
> >> it's coming a bit late in the GSoC schedule, I'm also posting this here.
> > 
> > Out of interest - how far did Mariusz get last year? I think his GSoC
> > project was similar.
> 
> Mariusz got about as far as specifying most of XKB in xcb/proto.
> Unfortunately, XKB is unlike most of the rest of the extensions, and
> required additional syntax to be able to specify it. libxcb doesn't know
> how to generate code from the new XSD yet, because he ran out of time.
> 
> There's probably about a whole GSoC project getting that working right
> there. Much of that time would probably be spent on the xcb list hashing
> out a decent C API, and only a smaller amount of time writing code to
> generate that API from the XML.
> 
> On top of that, Xlib does a fair amount of heavy lifting. An xcb/util
> library to do most of the same functions would be quite welcome. There's
> probably a 2nd GSoC project there.
> 
> There does exist a patch to let Wireshark parse the new syntax, if
> that's any consolation:
> https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4481
> 

Thanks for the summary. I think XInput suffers from a similar issue with
some requests requiring new syntax/libxcb parts to be parsed correctly. Is
this still correct?

Cheers,
  Peter

> >> So, here is a project idea for the GSoC:
> >>
> >> One of  the main area  preventing XCB wide  adoption over Xlib  is input
> >> support.  There are some information there[0] (incomplete ATM but it's a
> >> work in  progress) about the  current status. This SoC  project involves
> >> porting  Xlib  keyboard  functions  to  XCB and  working  on  related  X
> >> extensions (such as XKB, XKB2...).
> >>
> >> You don't really have to know XCB, so this project would definitely be a
> >> really  good  starting  point  if  you are  interested  in  low-level  X
> >> programming  and work  on something  that will  be widely  used  (XCB is
> >> supposed to be the future of X client library).
> >>
> >> If a student is interested in writing a proposal for this subject, don't
> >> hesitate to send an email to xcb at lists.freedesktop.org.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Arnaud Fontaine
> >>
> >> [0] http://xcb.freedesktop.org/XCBToDoKeyboard
> 
> 
> -- 
>                Open Text Connectivity Solutions Group
> Peter Harris                    http://connectivity.opentext.com/
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