Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Tue, 22 Aug 2000 14:22:20 +0200 | From | Franz Sirl <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] Re: Move of input drivers, some word needed from you |
| |
At 10:22 22.08.00, Vojtech Pavlik wrote: >On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 08:34:01PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > There is a push on to make ADB keyboards and mice go through the input > > > layer in the PPC port, but no-one has explained to me what we would > > > gain from that. > > > > Quite frankly, I think that input to a large degree was a thing where the > > argument for it has gone away. I suspect the GGI people are the only ones > > who _really_ feel they have to have it. > >Maybe. I personally never liked GGI much. In my opinion it was much too >complex for a simple (and impossible with the graphics part of it, too), >task. > >Well, even the X people seemed to like the input layer. I've discussed >it with Jim Gettys for example and found out this is very similar to how >he wanted the things to be when X was born. > >And game developers like it too, for example Sam Lantinga of Loki said >something like (quotation far from exact) 'it's much easier to write >input-related stuff in Linux than in Windows, I really enjoyed it'. > >And distribution makers like it. Once fully implemented, it could remove >most of the huge 'select your mouse type and model' menus in the >installers, a point where most users are perpetually making the wrong >choice.
Yes, every PPC distribution maker I talked to liked it, and I guess the benefits are even higher for distributions supporting multiple platforms.
>It's a level of abstraction that makes writing the low-level drivers >easier. Makes the drivers shorter, too. Application writing easier. I >believe that's good.
I wholeheartedly agree. Initially I entered this whole "input game" cause I wanted to get rid of "I ruined my keyboard layout with tool xyz" reports on PPC (not to talk about the "big USB disaster" in early 2.2) and took a look at the "Linux keycodes" approach in usb/keybdev.c. But it soon appeared to me that it would be just plain silly _not_ to use possibilities provided by the input drivers.
- it factors out a lot of code (eg. it obsoletes adbmouse.c on PPC, replaced with 5 lines of code) - it's convenient for driver developers - it's convenient for users (eg. one unified mouse protocol) - it's very lightweight
Franz.
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
|  |