X configuration paradigm, and a proposal

[Erik Harrison]

On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 09:54:06 -0500, Sean Middleditch
<elanthis at awesomeplay.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sun, 2004-11-07 at 17:03 -0300, Avi Alkalay wrote:
> > Currently is not easy to configure an X server. You have to know the
> > xorg.conf configuration file format, and know what to put there.
> >
> > So when you buy a new commodity video card, the manufacturer have to
> > ask you to edit xorg.conf manually (when he asks...), instead of
> > shipping together some program that makes the new configuration
> > automatically. I think this happens because the manufacturer doesn't
> > want to write an xorg.conf file parser and an editor to insert its
> > textual piece in the global configuration file.
> >
> > Same for monitors, multi-monitor desktops, special mice, modules,
> > screen resolutions (1024x768, 800x600) etc. Everything have to be done
> > by hand, or entirely regenerated by some distro-specific script, which
> > also makes you loose manually-edited stuff.
> >
> > The proposal is to upgrade the way X handles configuration (human
> > readable xorg.conf) to some hierarchy of configuration atoms
> > represented by key-value pairs. Something similar to GConf, but not
> > GConf because this one is not available when X needs to read its
> > configurations.
> >
> > A key-value pair paradigm will let a video device installer change
> > preciselly only the configuration atoms vital to him. The same for a
> > monitor, mouse, modules, filepaths, etc.
> > And with time, this will make X way more easier to configure, and user-friendly.
> 
> This is a poor solution to the problem.  All you are doing is making it
> easier to change the configuration.  There isn't a whole lot of
> difficulty with changing it now.  The reason most installers don't
> automatically change the configuration has nothing to do with the
> difficulty and everything to do with the fact that changing one bit may
> require vast changes elsewhere.  It's not an issue of parsing, it's an
> issue of logic.
> 
> A far better solution could keep the exact same configuration format we
> have now, but add an xorg.conf.d/ structure sort of mechanism that lets
> installers drop video card, monitor, and input device specification
> files (similar in nature to HAL FDI files - perhaps actually just use
> HAL...) and then the distribution's already developed, tested, and
> integrated configuration tools can use the information in those files.
> X server auto-configuration could also scan the files for information
> allowing it to select proper configurations for the present hardware if
> things like DCC/EDID don't work correctly for the present hardware.


Such a mechanism already exists in the server, in getconfig. It is
however, murky at best from the documentation how it works, and it is
dependent on Perl. I did some work on it a bit back that I lost when a
HD crashed, but it wasn't particularly brilliant work anyway.

-Erik

> 
> >
> > I'd like to hear comments about this.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Avi
> > _______________________________________________
> > xorg mailing list
> > xorg at freedesktop.org
> > http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg
> > 
> --
> Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com>
> AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
-Erik