[ubuntu-us-mn] Work on BlobEvent MPX

[Andrew Stromme]

Hi,

On Sunday 06 July 2008 07:19:41 Peter Hutterer wrote:
> Hey Andrew,
>
> On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 10:37:17PM -0500, Andrew Stromme wrote:
> >    We corresponded a few months back before the MPX merge and Xi 
2.0.
> >    First off, thanks for the work on this part, and I'm very thankful for
> >    your work on the documentation in the git xorg-docs branch.
> >    Secondly, I have more questions about BlobEvents =P. If you're still
> >    planning on reviving them, awesome, and I wonder if you have any
> >    glimpse of a timeframe?
>
> not really. the best I can give you is within the next 2 months, but that
> largely depends on what my workload will be (I'm starting a new job next
> week).
>
> If you are motivated, it might be easiest just to port the blob events to
> current master (now that everything has settled down a bit). I'm quite
> happy to give you hints of what you have to do, the code itself doesn't
> change that much from the old blob branch, it's mainly just knowing where
> to put which piece.
>

I am interested in this, especially now that I'm a tiny bit more comfortable 
working with git and xorg's upstream. Earlier I had tried checking out your 
blob branches, and only the xserver one pulled down correctly, the others 
failed. Is this where your work is?

> >    If you think that either it will be a long time or you're not planning
> >    on implementing BlobEvent support then I'm wondering what the best 
way
> >    to get similar support from a touch driver to apps. I would love to
> >    have a bitmap of the actual touch event. Is it best to have a wm-type
> >    application talk directly to the driver, bypassing the xserver? (I
> > feel like this wouldn't be of much use, because I'd be reimplementing
> > some of your work)
>
> quite frankly, this doesn't work. or to be more precise, it only works if
> you're willing to run a single app in full-screen and have no other app use
> the touchscreen at the same time. There's a number of libs that do that,
> TouchLib (www.nuigroup.com or so IIRC) is the prominent one here.
> It's not quite the same as blob events from the X server, but it may just
> solve what you require.

I agree, and that's why I'm saddened by most of the touch development... 
it's centered around one app. I would rather have the nice model we already 
have with XI devices.

>
> >    Otherwise, I could use Xi 2.0 (honestly I really only
> >    need 1.4 because I'm planning on using SD that are not attached to 
MD)
>
> SD's can be "floating" in XI 2, in which case they act pretty much exactly
> like old XI 1 devices that don't have SendCoreEvents set. so don't let that
> stop you from using XI 2 :)
>

I read about that! It looks great. And then I have the improvements available 
in 2 if I need them.

> Cheers,
>   Peter