On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Sottek, Matthew J wrote: >>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.
Absolutely nothing says that both can't co-exist. If the default tools try to allow configuration of everything, even some hardware specific things, they can try where possible and feasible to generalize these things, or in cases where that isn't possible, they can provide hardware specific customization. It depends on who writes the tool, what their objectives are, and what they're willing to accept into their project, be it hardware generic or hardware specific. Any hardware vendor, or other 3rd party is free to then roll their own tools in any way they see fit, and multiple tools can co-exist easily together, so both groups of people can have their cake and eat it too. What you are suggesting, attempts to limit one's choices, either as a user or as a developer. Thankfully, open source prevents such tunnel vision control. >>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. That sounds perfectly fine. And "vendor" in this sense could mean anything from "open source project (including XFree86)" to "OS vendor" to "video hardware vendor". -- Mike A. Harris _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
