Re: [Utopia] persistent partition naming

[David Zeuthen <david fubar dk>]

On Sat, Apr 24, 2004 at 03:46:12PM +0200, Kay Sievers wrote:
> Did you see libblkid fron the ext2fs-utils? It reads uuids and labels from
> all known filesystems. The approach of the library is a bit different,
> but at least we can steal all the magic probe code from it :)
> 

Neat.

> > > Nice, I really like the idea of having a device database permanentely
> > > installed on the system. What is the bigger picture here:
> > > If in the near future the vendors are natively supporting linux :), what kind
> > > of ".INF" file should they provide?
> > > 
> > 
> > The idea is that information like this goes in the hal spec but that
> > document kind of needs updating. Fortunately, few devices need files
> > like that. 
> 
> What is the "hal spec"? It's different from the collection of .fdi-files?
> 

Oh, it's the document specifying all the various properties that HalDevice
objects can assume. It's at http://freedesktop.org/Software/hal
(but it's a bit outdated atm)

> I really liked the installer of a USB-dsl-modem on Windows. After
> plugging in, it presents you with a selector for several predefined
> provider configs and one custom config which lets you insert all the
> values if nothing matches.
> Most of the user will just select the provider and all is fine.
> These questions are never asked again. This should work just fine for
> the tv-tuner example too.
> 
> So we may need some device config file which provides predefined property
> sets and a callout to let the user select one, or get custom values from
> the user? Some tricky .fdi-file?

Yes, it's usual per devicetype, sometimes per-vendor and sometimes even
per-site. Either way, I had some (possibly weak) ideas that the .fdi file
could merge stuff like this

 info.required.<param_name>.value  (of type string, int, bool etc.)
 info.required.<param_name>.default_value
 info.required.<param_name>.ui = {textentry, slider, combo, radiogroup..}
  info.required.<param_name>.combo0
  info.required.<param_name>.combo1
  ..
  info.required.<param_name>.slider_min
  info.required.<param_name>.slider_max

 info.required.<param_name>.label.<locale>
 info.required.<param_name>.tooltip.<locale>
 info.required.<param_name>.description.<locale>

So the .fdi not only specifies "I need, or provide, manual configuration"
but also it specifies "this is my configuration variables" and this is
how a UI should allow to configure them.

So, a device-manager could build the UI for configuring the device. Maybe
it's too crackful, it probably is, dunno. The keypoint, however, is that it
must be easy for OEM's and vendors to provide support for devices in GNOME.

> (hell, "callout" seems to be the word of the month :))
> 

Heh :-)

> Hmm, and what about kernel modules which needs parameters like hisax
> cards or some of the bttv tuner?
> Wouldn't it be nice to have the ability to invoke a custom setup,
> for the device from hal-manager, to rerun the setup?
> 

That would make sense, yeah.

> > An interesting idea would be to let vendors provide an icon or some
> > other branding for the device. Maybe it's far fetched, but perhaps that
> > would be an incitement for them to support free operating systems.
> 
> Yes, that's nice, besides that most of the vendor icons are ugly as hell :)
> But I've had a mobile phone with a nice looking icon and I really liked it
> to catch it without reading the volumes name.
> Nautilus may also offer the possibility to store a custom icon on the volume
> itself?
> 

Yeah, the idea is that .fdi files can be pulled from a number of places, 
Upstream projects, OS vendor, OEM, device vendors etc.

Cheers,
David