[Xorg] Input device hotplug

[Ely Levy]

doesn't it require also adding the ability to change configuration on the
fly?
like if I'm adding a new usb mouse and want to map the scroll to something
else?
if it does, wouldn't people want a way to keep the configuration to a
file?
wouldn't that totally change the idea behind xorg.conf and would finally
let people configure those things per user?


Ely Levy
System group
Hebrew University
Jerusalem Israel



On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, [ISO-8859-1] Kristian Høgsberg wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been working on making the X.org server hotplug aware with respect
> to input devices.  The current situation is that all devices must be
> setup in the config file and adding new devices requires config file
> editing and server restart.  What I've been trying to implement is that
> you can plug in an input device while the X server is running and it
> will show up as a new XInput device.
>
> The overall design I'm thinking of is to keep the device discovery
> mechanism out of the X server.  By adding requests to add and remove
> devices a client program can monitor hotplug events and tell the server
> to add or remove devices accordingly.
>
> I have a prototype running were I've added AddInputDevice() and
> RemoveInputDevice() in the XFree86-Misc extension:
>
>    typedef struct {
>        char*	name;
>        char*	value;
>    } XF86MiscDriverOption;
>
>    Status XF86MiscAddInputDevice(Display *dpy,
>                                  const char *identifier,
>                                  const char *driver,
>                                  XF86MiscDriverOption *options,
>                                  int option_count);
>
>    Status XF86MiscRemoveInputDevice(Display *dpy,
>                                     const char *identifier);
>
> i.e. the AddInputDevice arguments correspond to the InputDevice section
> of the config file.  The implementation mimicks the server
> initialization sequence; it loads the driver, builds an option list from
> the given options, calls PreInit(), and adds the device.
>
> In the prototype I'm using HAL (hal.freedesktop.org) on Linux to
> enumerate and discover devices.  Other systems could use other
> mechanisms, but HAL is intended to be cross platform, and a FreeBSD port
> is being discussed right now on the list.
>
> One thing I'ld like to discuss is where to add the add and remove device
> interface -- I dont think XFree86-Misc is the right place.  My first
> approach to this was that the new functionality should be an Xorg
> private interface, but I'm thinking that maybe it would be better if it
> was a standardized extension to XInput.  In that case, is the proposed
> interface too Xorg specific?
>
> Comments are welcome.  I'm currently trying to get my prototype cleaned
> up, and then I'll attach it to a bugzilla entry
>
> Kristian
>
>
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