Input device using HAL
Steve Lee
extended to switch/pointers. It currently covers block devices and the
odd system button (e.g. power).
Allowing any input device to plug and work seems a useful goal even if
most users will not change devices much. It would allow taking input
devices with the user. An OSK could get notification of new devices
and respond accordingly.
The big question is how would that interact with X which currently
grabs the input devices?
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fhal
--
Steve Lee
www.oatsoft.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk
www.fullmeasure.co.uk
billh
I think you've identified the tricky bit in using HAL to identify input
devices - the X server. It seems that, currently, once an input device
has been associated with a HID/XInput, there's no way to disconnect it
that works on all architectures.
One possibility would be to clone (via cut and paste, more or less) the
existing mouse drivers for these HIDs, so that we got drivers "for
free", but make sure those cloned drivers didn't get picked up by X
and/or the kernel HID devices. We could choose a driver according to
the device/manufacturer ID string, on a configurable basis.
It would still be a bit messy, since one user might want to use a head
tracker or trackball as a "normal HID", and another user would want to
interface directly with that device.... also, some devices are not so
good about identifying themselves (i.e. they masquerade as mice when
they are really some other kind of device).