On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerar...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On Tuesday 07 April 2009, Paul Hartman wrote: >> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:14 AM, sean <tech.j...@myfairpoint.net> wrote: >> > Is there a repository somewhere that you can download fdi files for a >> > device? >> > It seems that would make things easier for all, since many people likely >> > use the same devices in exactly or closely similar ways? >> > >> > I have to get my trackball working again the way I had before the >> > upgrade. >> >> Not that I know of (but it's a good idea!); once you understand the >> basic FDI syntax it is pretty easy to migrate your settings. Find the >> device name of the trackball you want to set up in >> /proc/bus/input/devices and then create an FDI which mimics the >> settings you used in xorg.conf. The Ubuntu wiki has a decent little >> tutorial on it: >> >> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Input > > which pretty much makes hal a bad idea. 'use hal so you don't have to edit > files' and then have to edit hal's convoluted xml files instead of the simple, > easy to read xorg.conf ...
Well, I think ultimately it's part of a larger hotplugging idea and autoconfig, not simply changing it from one format to another with no additional reasons. Without hotplugging you needed to define everything in xorg.conf but now you can skip the FDI unless you have some customized configuration (and even things like keyboard layout could be set up in gnome/kde/whatever rather than in xorg.conf/FDI). But, yes, xorg.conf is certainly more human-readable than FDI files for sure.
