On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 13:14 -0500, Darrin Thompson wrote:
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 12:43 -0500, David Zeuthen wrote:
> I'm all for improving the situation with around auto configuration of
> hardware, but with all due respect, I think you guys are trying to solve
> the symptom, not the real problem. In my view you really want the X
> server to be able to export an API for software higher up the stack
> (GNOME, KDE, etc.) to configure the X server. You also want to
> reconfigure it while it's running. It seems to me, that putting in an
> mediator, for basically writing out configuration files, is not the best
> API for doing this. I could be wrong though. Ideally the X server
> wouldn't even touch hardware before someone used that API to say "Add
> monitor, Add input device, blah blah".
>
Elektra does not prevent any of what you describe.
Not sure, I see that the Elektra API is key/value based and the only two
types supported appears to be UTF-8 strings and Blobs. Perhaps it would
be useful with other fundamental data types on grounds of type safety.
The current implementation does appear to assume (I've not tried
it)
that the current X config should map to neatly to key/value pairs in a
similarly shaped namespace. The namespace of those pairs seems to be a
sticking point. Seems that once you separate input config from monitor
config at the file level, keeping them together as "X" config doesn't
make so much sense anymore.
The API I'd like to see the X server export would definitely include
methods/facilities that you cannot express in terms of 'set one more
more keys atomically'.
For instance, shouldn't the X server expose a method Degauss() if the
hardware is capable of degaussing a monitor?
(locking down who and what is permitted to invoke Degauss() is another
matter entirely - I suggest that people take a lot at D-BUS and some of
the policy you can apply there; e.g. only allow console user to do it.
In fact, it might be too dangerous to expose such a method as repeated
use might damage the hardware, but you get the point)
Cheers,
David