ANN: xinput-ui: a simple GUI program to configure MPX

[Peter Hutterer]

On Thu, Jul 04, 2013 at 02:00:27PM -0800, Max E wrote:
> Hi Peter,
> 
> On Thu, 2013-07-04 at 15:51 +1000, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> > Hi Max, 
> > had a short play with it and it worked as expected. one thing I do have to
> > caution you for is that the xinput commandline is not a stable API and may
> > change at any time - breaking the script. You're much better off using
> > proper XI2 calls in the backend. is there a python-xlib that's XI2
> > capable?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> >    Peter
> 
> That is certainly a concern, and one I noted in the README. 
> 
> It doesn't look like python-xlib has that capability just yet, although
> I am actually seeing some recent commits to the project. I may ping
> their mailing list and request it as a feature.
> 
> But for now, if I were to use the X API, I'd probably need to add a C
> module, using some code adapted from the xinput utility itself. This is
> certainly a possibility, but there isn't necessarily any reason for me
> to do it until the command line output actually _does_ change. Another
> thing that might make me reconsider is if I wanted to add the ability to
> edit device properties, which I guess would make it a general-purpose
> input configuration tool. 
> 
> Like I said, the biggest gap in functionality right now is saving
> settings permanently. Does MPX have a standard mechanism for keeping the
> same configuration across reboots, or will I have to roll my own? That
> might actually be another reason to use the X API directly.

there's no server configuration to configure this on startup, you will have
to re-issue the commands after every reboot.

fwiw, this is not generally something that's covered by Xlib or the API
(i.e. the protocol) anyway, it's a feature that the server provides. all the
xorg.conf options that make settings persistent are specific to the server.

Cheers,
   Peter