>The thing is, a unified device-configuring front-end would be better 
>than having every driver writer roll their own. (I mean, we can follow 
>Windows if we want, but why incur development risk by developing what 
>essentially is several versions of the same thing?)

Windows does it the way it does for a reason (the "Advanced" button on
the display prefs GUI)

You will never be able to create a GUI that covers everything that is
configurable across a wide variety of vendor products... nor should
you try. Every vendor would like to have the ability to control unique
features of their driver in a unique way. It is fine to standardize
the basics, but if there is a "Custom output filer Foo" feature then
the vendor should be able to design a custom GUI to control it.
No matter how much you try to add to your standard GUI you will always
have vendors that would like to control one more, or they will not like
the controls for the features that exist.

>In such a world, the device driver would have to somehow describe what 
>parameters it understands, what legal values may be assigned, and allow 
>for a callback that would allow configuration setting and querying. Hmm.

This isn't hard. XFree is basically just the "man in the middle" with regard to the 
config client program. The client says "Foo filter = 4"
and X passes that info to the driver without knowing or caring what
that means. It can also save/restore the persistent data without
knowing the details.

I would advocate a config system that has a basic set of well known
parameters. Width, Height, Depth ... maybe muti-display details too.
And everything else is left up to the Vendor to implement in their
own config program.

-Matt

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