Input device design (3)

[Russell Shaw]

Joe Krahn wrote:
> I have over the last several years made efforts to work with XInput

All this has got me thinking a bit. It is desireable to try and keep
hardware specifics and policy out of the X server.

I've disregarded my previous ideas. Now i thinK:

   The X server could monitor a special device such as /dev/sysconfig or
   a known ip address or socket so that if the user was to unplug/plug
   mice, keyboards, or any other hardware, the kernel or user-space
   programs or a daemon could write notification messages to it.

When any of these server parameters/properties is changed, an X event
can be sent to all the running clients so they can adapt.

So to implement this:

   1) define a message protocol for the X server to read hardware notifications
      from the device or socket. Maybe dbus could be used, but i'm not familiar
      with it

   2) add some new X message protocols such as "hardware changed" events

The actual programs for configuring hardware don't need to know about X, but
they or the kernel or a daemon needs to write the notification to the thing
that the X server is listening to.