Elektrified X.org released (was: X configuration paradigm, and a proposal)

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 13:23 -0500, Jim Gettys wrote:
> David,
> 
> I agree with you and Kristian and I have started work, specifically on
> the input system side to do exactly what you suggest.  Similar 
> work ought to be done someday for the screens themselves (hotplug being
> a reality even for screens; today with PCMCIA and PCI express is just
> beginning to ship).

Or more simply, and for a long time already, with laptops on which one
really want to connect/disconnect an external monitor without restarting
the whole desktop environment ! :)

I'd be happy to help get the necessary support in the radeon driver if X
provides the infrastructure for that.

> And yes, everything needs to be dynamic, rather than static, to the
> extent possible.
> 
> However, we'll still probably need some sort of configuration system
> for "non-standard" situations.  It may be something other than the
> current config file will be desirable for this...
> 
> 				- Jim
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 12:43 -0500, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > Hey,
> > 
> > I'm all for improving the situation with around auto configuration of
> > hardware, but with all due respect, I think you guys are trying to solve
> > the symptom, not the real problem. In my view you really want the X
> > server to be able to export an API for software higher up the stack
> > (GNOME, KDE, etc.) to configure the X server. You also want to
> > reconfigure it while it's running. It seems to me, that putting in an
> > mediator, for basically writing out configuration files, is not the best
> > API for doing this. I could be wrong though. Ideally the X server
> > wouldn't even touch hardware before someone used that API to say "Add
> > monitor, Add input device, blah blah".
> > 
> > Anyway, with the right API in the X server (which would probably be
> > exported through D-BUS), I should be able to write a daemon, let's call
> > it gnome-input-manager, that runs in the desktop session as user davidz.
> > This would also allow said daemon to disable the touchpad when I connect
> > an external mouse or, for more fun, to disable it around intervals where
> > I'm punching the keys. The reason you want this in the desktop session
> > is that you want to query the locally logged in users preferences from
> > e.g. gconf or whatever.
> > 
> > Just what I personally think.
> > 
> > Have fun,
> > David
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > xorg at freedesktop.org
> > http://freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg
> 
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-- 
Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh at kernel.crashing.org>