[Utopia] Re: Gnome Volume Mgr ==> Gnome Hardware Mgr ??

[Robert Love <rml novell com>]

On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 11:36 -0700, Johnson, Charles F wrote:

[ resending from the account subscribed to utopia-list ]

> Here at Intel, we've been looking at Linux client device management
> support and specifically with the X server.  (hotplug input devices,
> auto-detection of support for external displays, etc.)

This is great.  There is a lot of work yet to do.

Particularly, after attending a conference this weekend, I can point out
the dire situation with respect to external displays!

> Anyway I read your Utopia article in Linux Journal and after reading
> your blog I definitely think the idea of expanding the scope of the
> volume manager to be hardware manager makes a lot of sense.  It
> already is integrated into the Linux hotplug system along with HAL
> & DBUS.   Has there been more thoughts along these lines ??

I think that the change to gnome-hardware-manager is an issue of naming
only, because we /already/ made the change technically: g-v-m now
manages mice, keyboards, scanners, printers, and iPods, in addition to
media and removable drives.

I would be happy to add more.

What reason is there, for example, to make gnome-power-manager separate?

> I'm now wondering if any changes to the X server really should be done
> within the context of Gnome Volume Mgr instead of something indpendent.
> So I guess my real question here is if you think this is the current
> trend in the community ??  (I also CC'd this to the Utopia list.)

The line between the two layers is sometimes vague.  It is hard to
define here and now and more of a case-by-case issue.  But I think
"making X dumber" is something that most people, the X developers
included, agree with.

I had lunch with Jim Gettys a year or so ago and we talked about just
this: X should not have to understand hardware or configure itself.  HAL
and other layers could happily do the job.

        Robert Love