[RFC] Multitouch support, step one

[Peter Hutterer]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 08:15:14AM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
> Peter Hutterer writes:
> 
> [snip]
> > Details:
> > The data we get from the (Linux) kernel includes essentially all the ABS_MT
> > events, x, y, w, h, etc. We can pack this data into valuators on the device.
> > In the simplest case, a device with two touchpoints would thus send 4
> > valuators - the first two being the coordinate pair for the first touch
> > point, the latter two the coordinates for the second touch point.
> 
> Short comment: There will be more valuators; a max of 32 is not enough.

I expect so too. Right now, MAX_VALUATORS is a simple #define that can be
arbitrarily changed. Except that like so many defines we need to ensure that
actually changing it doesn't cause regression in code that expects it to be
exactly 36 (I just checked again, it's actually 36, not 32)

The only hard limit I can think of is 256 which is what the XI1 protocol
limits it to.

Cheers,
  Peter

> Long version:
> 
> I think this undersells the number of valuators that MT devices will
> provide.  I am only really familiar with Apple's Magic Mouse, but I
> understand Apple's other MT devices report similar data (except for not
> having actual, touch-independent X/Y/button data).  The Magic Mouse has
> hardware touch tracking, and reports the orientation, semi-major axis
> length, semi-minor axis length, touch area and a state or event bitmask
> for each touch.
> 
> The tracking ID will probably be the most useful for applications,
> followed by touch area (the mouse can report a touch before physical
> contact occurs).  I am not sure how gesture recognition would use the
> ellipse data, but I am pretty sure that some applications will want
> them.  The interpretation of the state/event bitmask is currently
> unclear, so it could be reasonably omitted.
> 
> With the standard X/Y valuators and buttons as a base, and a likely
> desire to emulate vertical and horizontal scroll wheels outside the
> application, the Magic Mouse needs ~5 + 7*N valuators for N touches --
> with a 32 valuator limit, it will only be able to pass some of the
> hardware fields to applications.
> 
> So, as a non-X developer, I would like that limit to go up.  Barring
> that, I would like some notional plan on what the long-term solution
> will look like if the short-term solution involves truncated event
> reports.
> 
> Michael Poole