GSoC project idea: input support for XCB

[Peter Harris]

On 2010-03-24 19:28, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 03:11:38PM +0100, Arnaud Fontaine wrote:
>> I have  already updated  SummerOfCodeIdeas wiki page  about that  but as
>> it's coming a bit late in the GSoC schedule, I'm also posting this here.
> 
> Out of interest - how far did Mariusz get last year? I think his GSoC
> project was similar.

Mariusz got about as far as specifying most of XKB in xcb/proto.
Unfortunately, XKB is unlike most of the rest of the extensions, and
required additional syntax to be able to specify it. libxcb doesn't know
how to generate code from the new XSD yet, because he ran out of time.

There's probably about a whole GSoC project getting that working right
there. Much of that time would probably be spent on the xcb list hashing
out a decent C API, and only a smaller amount of time writing code to
generate that API from the XML.

On top of that, Xlib does a fair amount of heavy lifting. An xcb/util
library to do most of the same functions would be quite welcome. There's
probably a 2nd GSoC project there.

There does exist a patch to let Wireshark parse the new syntax, if
that's any consolation:
https://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4481

Peter Harris

>> So, here is a project idea for the GSoC:
>>
>> One of  the main area  preventing XCB wide  adoption over Xlib  is input
>> support.  There are some information there[0] (incomplete ATM but it's a
>> work in  progress) about the  current status. This SoC  project involves
>> porting  Xlib  keyboard  functions  to  XCB and  working  on  related  X
>> extensions (such as XKB, XKB2...).
>>
>> You don't really have to know XCB, so this project would definitely be a
>> really  good  starting  point  if  you are  interested  in  low-level  X
>> programming  and work  on something  that will  be widely  used  (XCB is
>> supposed to be the future of X client library).
>>
>> If a student is interested in writing a proposal for this subject, don't
>> hesitate to send an email to xcb at lists.freedesktop.org.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Arnaud Fontaine
>>
>> [0] http://xcb.freedesktop.org/XCBToDoKeyboard


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