Zapping the Xorg server

[Peter Hutterer]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 07:14:15PM +0200, Wolfgang Draxinger wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:07:16 +1000
> Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer at who-t.net> wrote:
> 
> > re:xmodmap, the following may be interesting reading
> > http://who-t.blogspot.com/2010/06/keyboard-configuration-its-complicated.html
> 
> Educational indeed. However I hate relying on desktop environments and
> their developers. What if I don't use one of the big two (Gnome, KDE)?
> What if I'm using XMonad and must do everything using CLI tools called
> by scripts? (BTW: The CLI tools tend to be more reliable than their
> GUI counterparts, e.g. I use xrandr exclusively because any GUI to
> XRandR has issues in some way, and I've become tired of bug reorting).

Then you get to either fix the scripts or fix your DE. No-one really cares
_what_ desktop environment you're running and one is as good as the other.
The one developers are running themselves naturally get more attention. If
you chose to use a different one, then you need to spend the time fixing it
up to move with the times.

> Also it's again a prime example of fancy features given higher priority
> than the really important stuff. The guy who actually has multiple
> keyboards all with different layouts connected to the same X session
> please stand up. Yes, it's a nice "to have", but I think there are other
> things, that really should be brought forward. Like Gallium and other
> parts of a unified graphics system for Linux.

And you are free to motivate people to work on the features you really want
instead of the features they want. I for one am hesitant to tell people what
they need to do in their spare time and even less so for people who employed
by a different employer than me.

Also, assuming that if we ditched input features somehow Gallium or other
graphics parts would be finished sooner is a logical fallacy.

> Or working in the stability and code quality of X.org as a whole.
> 
> > re:zapping, the XKB option was _added_ in response to the initial
> > default of DontZap on (which now defaults to off again, like it
> > always has) http://who-t.blogspot.com/2009/04/zapping-server.html
> 
> Allright. But then I propose, that there should be some way to
> configure a Zap that can't be overridden by the user.

Now we're talking: that is actually an interesting request, though I do have
to ask: why?

> > Either way, it's not going to be removed by "some smartass".
> 
> We'll see about that. The problem here (and with some of other more or
> less recent developments) is/was, that I tend to have a pretty good
> gut feeling about what's going to happen. So let's cross fingers, that
> I'm wrong this time around.
> 
> If I had to decide anything about this, I'd put development of features
> to a full stop and focus on getting rid of bugs and improve stability.

you are welcome to help of course. submitting patches is the most direct way
of helping out, but testing, reporting bugs, and helping with documentation
(both in man pages and on the wiki) is equally important.
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
 
Cheers,
  Peter