Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 22 May 1999 15:30:48 +0200 | From | Martin Mares <> | Subject | Re: Mouse and keyboard drivers in the Linux Kernel? |
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Hello!
> It is normal for the Linux kernel, but not very programmer friendly. > The abnormality of the Linux OS is that there are absolultely no > standard OS services for dealing with the mouse and keyboard from a > console in the manner that we need to.
There _are_ standard Linux OS services dealing with the mouse, but _not_ in the kernel. They are in libgpm.
> The keyboard services currently in the kernel are archaic, and not useful for > event driven systems (hence the need to program the keyboard in raw mode).
Agreed. I and Vojtech Pavlik are currently working on a better code.
> You have just summed up the *exact* problem with the current scenario > in Linux. All that stuff needs to be handled in user space, so any > console apps that want to talk to the mouse and keyboard in a modern > manner need to contain code that knows how to talk to every mouse > device,
No way, they just link with libgpm.
> and knows how to do code page translations for keyboard data.
> There should be a standard set of OS services (perhaps a beefed up > userland daemon based on GPM, but I prefer it in the kernel)
Why?
> that *everyone* is expected to talk to. This way all apps can be easily > extended to add support for new mice and keyboards without having to update > the code for every project and deal with it that way.
> As for GPM, the biggest problem with it is that it is always an > optional component in Linux distributions. Hence not all systems have > it installed, and hence you can't rely on it.
Why? Even the version of libc you use is not in _all_ distributions. This is exactly why almost every distribution has a system of dependencies which allows packages to specify what optional packages they need.
Have a nice fortnight -- Martin `MJ' Mares <mj@ucw.cz> http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mj/ Faculty of Math and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Rep., Earth "Linux vs. Windows is a no-WIN situation."
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