multi-touch-dev team mailing list archive

[Armando Visconti <armando.visconti@xxxxxx>]

Ciao Chase,

Thx for replying.

> > OK, clear.
> > So, basically we need to comply to Xinput 2.1.
> >     
>
> After reading the thread, I worry that there may have been a disconnect.
> You and Henrik may be on the complete same page, so feel free to ignore
> :). I just wanted to state a few things in more detail.
>
> The kernel has two protocols. New drivers should be written for protocol
> B (the "slotted" protocol). This will become even easier in 2.6.38 when
> the input multitouch driver API in the kernel is refined, but there are
> a few examples of protocol B drivers already.
>
> Now we're done with the kernel :).
>   

Yes, that's perfectly clear to me.
Actually I have more experience with the kernel side than
the user space.
;-)

Currently I'm implementing the Type A in kernel 2.6.32 in the driver
for our selected multi-touch device (Data Modul easyTouch).

Soon we will move to kernel 2..6.36, and I will change the interface
to Type B protocol.

Still we will retain the mtdev library as pointed out by Henrik, as it
is capable to pass-through Type B events, with the advantage
of keeping applications untouched!


> In userspace, Ubuntu has gone two routes. The first route, which shipped
> in Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick), can be described as a glorified hack :). It
> presents gestures through the X window system if you use our patches to
> add gesture support to the X evdev input module and the X server. On top
> of that, you need utouch-grail and utouch-geis libraries to interpret
> and use gestures.
>
> In Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) we will be integrating a pre-release
> implementation of XInput 2.1. This will include full multitouch support
> integrated into the X server. It will still look like a patch against X
> evdev and X server, since it's prerelease, but it will provide real
> multitouch support to client applications through the XInput API. We
> will be modifying utouch-grail and utouch-geis to use the new XInput MT
> interface to recognize gestures.
>
> As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts here under rapid
> development. We are targeting Ubuntu alone for shipping, though we are
> participating in upstream projects to get all the ground work laid for
> future upstream releases as well. Thus, you may have issues trying to
> get all this to work in a different distribution right now. You probably
> will have to do quite a bit of backporting and testing work to ensure
> it's working properly.
>   

Yes, I see.
Well, I'm not sure what level of integration we want to achieve in STLinux
in the short term. Probably we will skip the gesture recognition part at
the beginning, and just stay to the simple integration with X.org.

Later on we will also see the gesture recognition part, and at that time
things will be also more stable from your side....
;-)

THx again,
Arm