[ubuntu-x] X configuration in Hardy?

[Rob Hughes]

On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 16:22 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2007 at 01:09:46PM -0500, Rob Hughes wrote:
> > >   https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/autoconfigure-monitor-frequency
> > 
> > In looking at this, I see a lot of focus on cards and monitors, but what
> > about input devices? None of my mine work correctly unless I'm using the
> > evdev driver. This has also been one of the biggest sore points for me,
> > since not only do the devices move around between boots forcing me to
> > manually edit my xorg after figuring out what event entry the device has
> > moved to, but also a lot of hunting and poking to get the button
> > mappings right. And even then, thanks to Logitech's completely
> > bastardized approach to setting things up, trying to use things like the
> > multimedia functions of my keyboard don't work, since the events come in
> > over the mouse event interface, and not the keyboard's. Are there any
> > plans to make any of this any easier? I realize what I'm talking about
> > is probably a corner case, but the keyboard/mouse combos are getting
> > fairly popular, and I don't see the architecture changing, since the
> > vendors can do whatever they want with the windows drivers.
> 
> Hi Rob,
> 
> Yes, you're definitely right.  Definitely, the solution we come up with
> needs to also account for input devices - currently as others have
> pointed out, displayconfig-gtk and bulletproof-x do nothing to address
> the issues with configuring input devices, and actually can make the
> current situation even more irritating (a bad input config can boot you
> into BPX, but there's no controls there to deal with it yet).
> 
> The whole configuration issue is not something we can solve in a single
> spec though.
> 
> I've dug through all of the current proposed specs and flagged a bunch
> that look like good ideas but need to be fleshed out further, including
> a handful that focus on different input issues including those you
> mention:
> 
>   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Blueprints
> 
> Rob, could you select a couple and elaborate them with your own
> thoughts?  I would love to see at least one of the input specs matured
> to a point where we could work on it for Hardy.
> 
> Note that Xorg did a ton of work on input for xserver 1.4, which will be
> included for Hardy, so I think we'll be in a better position to work on
> input issues for Hardy than we've been previously.
> 
> Bryce

Hi Bryce,

I'm sure I can come up with some use cases and how I think it should
work. Specifically, I'm looking at keyTouch and gui-mouse-configuration.
I don't see MouseExtraButtons as being that useful (at least to me), as
it seems to ignore evdev devices. Is there more that you would want? I'm
not a dev, so even some of my design ideas may end up being impractical.
And I wouldn't want to touch implementation.

Otherwise, I'd be happy to take ownership of that task, and get the
specs fleshed out over the next few weeks.

Thanks,
Rob