Multi-pointer X is coming

[Posted May 27, 2008 by corbet]

From:		Peter Hutterer <peter-AT-cs.unisa.edu.au>
To:		xorg-AT-lists.freedesktop.org
Subject:		MPX has been merged
Date:		Tue, 27 May 2008 14:13:30 +0930
Message-ID:		<20080527044330.GA16104@localdomain>
Archive-link:		Article

For those of you watching xorg-commits, you may have noticed that MPX has been
merged into master [1]. 
The client-side libraries and protocol headers have been merged quietly last
week already, this time is just the xserver itself.

A change in the previously proposed schedule [2]: the XKB rework didn't make
it.  With the recent SSL issue and other workloads, Daniel wasn't able to get
it ready in time. We agreed on merging MPX without it, as it should not affect
XKB much anyway.

A number of changes went in since the announce, the most important being the
return of input device cordinate scaling. Tablets can thus be used. Thanks to
Magnus Vigerloef for his help on this matter.

The input ABI has been bumped and all the input drivers on fdo have been
updated to compile with the new API. You will need to get the latest version
however. I don't think the ABI will remain stable until the next release, but
I figured input modules not loading encourages people to fetch the latest
release rather than complaining about them not compiling anymore.

The video ABI has not been bumped yet, but you _must recompile_ your video
driver. No API changes, a recompile is enough.

As previously mentioned, existing setups should not be affected and anything
that changes is most likely a bug. Unless you create additional cursors/foci,
in which case the border between bug and broken UI paradigm is somewhat
blurry.

For the impatient, run the following commands:
Update xorg/app/xinput to the most recent version.

xinput --list --short
xinput --create-master "foobar"
xinput --reattach "MyMouse" "foobar pointer"
xinput --reattach "MyKeyboard" "foobar keyboard"

It is at this point you have a second set of devices that work independently.
It is at this point that you may realise that neither GNOME, KDE, nor any
other environment actually works decently with multiple devices. So start
fixing them right now.

To go back to a standard setup:

xinput --reattach "MyMouse" "Virtual core pointer"
xinput --reattach "MyKeyboard" "Virtual core keyboard"
xinput --remove-master "foobar pointer"

Have fun. Input bugs that result from the MPX merge can be assigned to me. 
So long, and thanks for all the mice.

Cheers,
  Peter

[1] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-commit/2008-Ma...
[2] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2008-May/03522...

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Way back when

Posted May 28, 2008 1:44 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

I first saw this sort of thing back in the mid-'90s.  Ted Selker's crew at IBM Almaden had
altered a Thinkpad keyboard to have two nubs, using the left one, in the most trivial example,
to operate a palette.  Selker is now at the MIT Media Lab.  He invented that nub thing in the
first place.  His group, and Joe Betts in particular, invented the tiny laptop power supply
that you think nothing of nowadays, but they (the power supplies, not his group) used to weigh
nearly as much as a laptop.  Joe Betts, now Joe Betts-Lacroix, seems to still be at Oqo.

At the time they only seemed interested in jimmying support for dual pointers into MSWin95.  X
was a dead end, although even then you could get Thinkpads with three "mouse" buttons.  Of
course at the time Apple was foredoomed, and in any case was probably trying to find ways to
get along with fewer axes, not use more.

Multi-pointer X is coming

Posted May 29, 2008 14:50 UTC (Thu) by Quazatron (guest, #4368) [Link]

Great, now we can get RSI on _both_ hands. Thanks, a lot, X.org!

Multi-pointer X is coming

Posted May 29, 2008 14:58 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

You could use your nose... and get RSI in your neck :)