Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 7 Jan 2006 01:25:42 +0100 (CET) | From | Peter Osterlund <> | Subject | Re: request for opinion on synaptics, adb and powerpc |
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On Sat, 7 Jan 2006, Luca Bigliardi wrote:
> Hi Peter, > i'd like to have your opinion on this mail[1] (and the thread). > Benjamin Herrenschmidt is the maintainer of linux on powerpc; > he has rejected my patch for synaptics support on adb based trackpad > (found on ibook and powerbook) because in his opinion the absolute mode > should be configurable at runtime when synaptics X driver is loaded. > IMHO his idea could be good, but i'm not aware so i'm going to ask your > opinion. > > [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2006/01/msg00090.html
I once suggested this a long time ago when the synaptics driver was first included in the kernel. However, the input subsystem maintainer (Vojtech) didn't like the idea. (The case with multiple readers reading from the same event device would be weird if one application could switch mode and cause another application to receive different events.)
The plan was to have the kernel report raw data to user space using the event devices and make the X server understand it. The imps/2 emulation done by mousedev.c (ie /dev/input/mice) would then become obsolete.
The X synaptics driver is a step in that direction, but because of licensing conflicts the driver has not been included in Xorg. Therefore the synaptics driver is not always present, in which case the kernel mousedev emulation is used, which is almost always worse than the built in emulation in the touchpad hardware that would have been used if the touchpad was in relative mode.
Fedora handles this situation by always installing the synaptics package and setting up the X config file automatically if the computer has a synaptics touchpad. I guess this approach could work for other distributions too.
-- Peter Osterlund - petero2@telia.com http://web.telia.com/~u89404340 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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