[ubuntu-x] UDS: Graphical Configuration Tool for Wacom Tablets & TabletPCs

[Loïc Martin]

Timo Aaltonen a écrit :
> On Thu, 11 Dec 2008, Loïc Martin wrote:
> 
>> Bryce Harrington a écrit :
>>>> I've checked the xorg mailing lists archives for a few weeks,
>>>> and there's still no solution offered for the post-xorg.conf
>>>> era.
>>> 
>>> Do you mean input-hotplug support in wacom-tools?  Yes I'd love
>>> to hear some plans upstream around that, and a rough idea of an
>>> ETA.
>> As far as I can tell, there's no plans and no ETA. The question
>> will have to be raised in xorg mailing list, I can try to poke
>> their IRC channel a bit (most of the replies will probably fly far
>> above my head, so IRC is a good start).
>> 
>> If by upstream you mean wacom, OTOH, they're still waiting for xorg
>> to decide what's the method going to be. Xorg was going to the HAL
>> method, but real life has invalidated that for wacom devices, even
>> though they haven't formally acknowledged the fact.
> 
> It's just a communication problem. Wacom upstream needs to get to
> xorg@ / #xorg-devel, not the other way around. AIUI HAL input-hotplug
> can be made to work with wacom, but it needs changes in the driver
> not the server. Could be that it needs changes in both, but that's
> why the wacom people should speak up :)

HAL people (At least Danny Kukawa) say it doesn't belong in HAL. Daniel
Stone (from Xorg?) also agrees... (see
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2008-November/040233.html )
while the developer that advised the use of HAL/fdi (Peter Hutterer)
didn't comment on the subject raised in xorg mailing list.

Danny Kukawa (HAL):
> See my comment in my other mail ... the idea to use HAL to store/provide X 
> config options is plain stupid. If X would have an own daemon/tool for this, 
> then we wouldn't have these limitations.

and in another post in linuxwacom-discuss :
>> Ubuntu has Xorg 1.5.0 and the hotplug is not complete. Ive talked about it
>> > up and down the stack. HAL is where it hangs up right now. Hal can not
>> > handle 1:n maping betwen kernel device and X devices the tablets use.
>> > However, HAL people seem to think, that his is NOT their place to fix.
> 
> And it's not the job of HAL developers to fix this isse. And it's also not 
> possible since HAL only handle 'real' devices.
> 
>>From my POV as one of the HAL developer, it's a total 'stupid' (sorry, but I 
> have to say it that way) idea to do X configuration in HAL at all. 
> 
> First: there are plans to replace HAL, which means it's to back the wrong 
> horse since the current stuff need to replaced by another, not yet developed, 
> tool to do the same like HAL. It need again adoptions in X and all the 
> drivers which deliver currently some info via fdi files.
> 
> Second: it's IMO the wrong way to use HAL as a config store for X at all. Yes, 
> there are ppl. saying: "Also other tools can use this information." but in 
> fact there are no other tools, except X, which need them. X should do this 
> task on it's own (maybe by using HAL or another tool to get some information 
> about a device to identify it).
> 
>> > Changing the linux-wacom to act differently does not seem to be an option
>> > either. Ive found claims that this configuration is the job of a daemon,
>> > but there seems to be no modern daemon around. There is wdaemon that
>> > presumes X org conf, so i dont think that is the solution.
> 
> I don't know this daemon but maybe it's a solution. At least it's better than 
> using HAL as a X config store.

Ron (Debian, linuxwacom) commented that post :
>> > Second: it's IMO the wrong way to use HAL as a config store for X at all. Yes, 
>> > there are ppl. saying: "Also other tools can use this information." but in 
>> > fact there are no other tools, except X, which need them. X should do this 
>> > task on it's own (maybe by using HAL or another tool to get some information 
>> > about a device to identify it).
> 
> Is this what is being talked about for xorg1.5, or are you basically saying
> this cannot be done at all with these devices for the foreseeable future?

Ping (linuxwaxcom) said linuxwacom drivers would support hotplug with
0.8.4 (or 0.8.3 for the development drivers) but that's limited to the
stylus, not because of the wacom drivers, but because of the Xorg
situation (Xorg wants to use HAL, but HAL won't allow more than one
device, which brings us back to square 1).

I checked xorg, linuxwacom-devel and linuxwacom-discuss mailing lists
thoroughly starting from July 2008 (when Peter Hutterer talked about the
HAL/fdi method), and that's most of it. Xorg wants to use HAL for that,
HAL won't allow more than one device (they also have issues with HAL
being used to pass configuration options - and is HAL even in
FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Solaris, because if not we're going to create a mess for
wacom users on these OS), and linuxwacom are going to support Xorg's
hotplugging, except Xorg's solution for hotplugging will make that
pointless (for the aforementioned reasons).

Loïc