Remapping Synaptics Touchpad

[Tias]

Peter Hutterer wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 02:26:03PM +0100, Harald Braumann wrote:
>> On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 08:48:32 +1000
>> Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer at who-t.net> wrote:
>>
>>> no, evdev doesn't have any specific touchpad features to configure
>>> this. generally, we encourage ppl to use synaptics for touchpads and
>>> evdev for other devices, avoiding the duplication of functionality.
>>> your case is a bit of a corner case, so you fall through the cracks
>>> here. sorry about that.
>> OK, thanks for all your help. One last question: will the evdev driver
>> eventually become the one and only driver and also implement device
>> specific properties, or is it planned to keep some device specific
>> drivers, like synaptics?
> 
> At this point, I don't know whether to say yes or no, but my tendency is
> towards "no".
> 
> evdev is a generic driver that's supposed to work with all devices (for some
> value of "work"). synaptics has two specific features, one of which is that
> it talks synaptics protocol (used on non-Linux systems) and the other is
> that many of its features are specifically geared towards touchpads.
> I don't want to mess up evdev with all the features synaptics has, it'd make
> evdev a lot harder to read and fix bugs for.
> 
> now, as you may have heard there are plans to move the drivers back into the
> server.

Ah, that's interesting. Is there some place where we can hear more about 
this ?
I've spent some time trying to understand how touchscreens were handled 
in the old days and now, and I would be interested to know where it 
might be heading in the future : )


Kind regards,
Tias

> if input drivers are moved into the server it should be a lot easier
> to share code between them, at which point synaptics may become a layer on
> top of evdev, or the evdev-specific features being merged into some library
> shared between all drivers, resulting in synaptics gaining evdev properties.
> This is pie-in-the-sky territory though and unlikely to happen in the near
> future*.
> 
> Cheers,
>   Peter
> 
> * unless someone actually volunteers to do it.
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