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SubjectAntwort: Re: Mouse and keyboard drivers in the Linux Kernel?
Ian Eure wrote:
> Kendall Bennett wrote:
> > [..Linux not having genic mousedriver...]
> This is normal. AFAIK this is the documented behavior when you read
> directly from a serial port.
> > [...More about Mice from Kendall...]
> Mice are handled from userspace; either the gpm daemon or the X server.
> I really see no reason to have mouse drivers in the kernel, we should
> only have the bare minimum needed to access them from userspace, e.g.
> serial port/usb/busmouse stuff.
Well, its all a question of viewpoint. Seen from the point that a mouse
is only another thing dangling from the serial port, you are correct.
Seen from the point that it is the OSs job to provide more-or-less uniform
access to different hardware (e.g. it does not matter wether a harddisk
is an ide or scsi device, both can be accessed as normal block devices),
it is far from complete.

> There are mouse routines you can link to from userspace distributed with
> gpm, (libgpm) I suggest that you snag the source and take a look. Of
> course, this is assuming that you want to use mice for the text console.
Yes. And each and every program outside needs to know about the port, the
type of mouse, other params and can't handle the new xyz-mouse, because
this driver is not yet implemented. Or it fails, because the user has
not the proper daemon running, etc.

> You might also want to take a look at what the GGI/KGI people are doing
> WRT mice. They seem to have a pretty good thing going with video and
> keyboards.
> > [...Kendall requesting a unified keyboard-driver in the same style...]
> Definitely look at GGI/KGI. You might also want to sift through the
> SVGAlib source, as I believe that it handles mice and other input.
I think the suggestions of Kendall Bennett are quite sensible. An input
queue like the one in the AmigaOS would be quite nice: A unified input
queue, with events like Keyboard, Mouse, Timer, etc, with timestamps,
raw and cooked values, current qualifiers (i.e. state of shift & friends),
timestamps, and maybe some other eventtypes more suitable for modern OSs,
in a generic, extensible format. Only that all receivers of inputevents
are reader only, and provider for the inputevent-stream have to be root
or suchlike (In AmigaOS, everyone and his uncle could create, modify and
delete inputevents once he got his hands on the input queue).
Maybe we'll need stuff like "you are the only one receiving this package"
and "All keyboard events are mine, only mine" for entering passwords.

Unified input streams can become quite handy if one considers new methods
of entering data: Barcode scanner, card reader, voice input, scanners
for fingerprints, retinas, DNA ("enter sperm to log in"), or alpha wave
patterns (Help, I'm lifting off! Somebody please tie me to my chair! :-)


Just my EUR0,02

Yours, Christian Treczoks



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