Wacom config hacks (was: An example of how things should *not* be done)

[Bryce Harrington]

> Please anybody, don't take this e-mail personally.

In general, if you need to preface emails with this statement, it's
probably a clue you should do more fact checking.

Also, note that there is a ubuntu-x@ mailing list specifically for X
issues that would be more effective to bring up X issues on.

> Regarding the wacom enabled/disabled by default issues, by googling
> better, I found the culprit:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wacom-tools/+bug/42553

No.  That bug was mostly cosmetic IMHO, aside from the .xsession-errors
file growth in Kubuntu.  Note there were dozens of other similar bug
reports that derived from this issue.  In fact, a lot of users confused
the wacom errors in their Xorg logs for the cause of their (unrelated) X
problems.  The bug that actually motivated this change was #83860 from
Henrik Omma.  I talked with him at length about the pros/cons of this
change, but given that the "fix" for tablets was an ugly hack, and that
it was only needed for a small subset of tablet users anyway (who could
still uncomment the entries in xorg.conf to enable it), and that it
resulted in a completely unusuable Ubuntu for users needing accessible
login, we decided it was better to go with the current approach.

In theory, input-hotplug would have been available for Hardy, but that
turned out to be less mature than expected.

> and then Bryce himself *disabled* wacom setup *without* using his own
> patch to conditionally re-enable the setup in xorg whenever
> /dev/input/wacom exists. I can't know why.  There is no apparent
> reason for this choice, that was just a quick decision to close the
> bug.

Not sure how you missed it, but I was quite explicit in the bug you
reference in stating why my patch was not viable: "However, as others
point out in this and other wacom threads, this [patch] obviously would
break things for wacom users who did not have their wacom attached when
they [install] the system..."

So your patch and mine would just "accidentally" work, if the user
happened to have the tablet attached during installation.

Bryce