Conference turris::digital_unix

8632.0. "Xdevice driver development" by HYDRA::LNARAYAN () Wed Jan 29 1997 10:03

    Hello
    
    A partner is looking for example code/docs relating to XDevice driver
    development. Can someone help with pointers to docs/example etc.
    
    Thanks in Advance
    Lakshminarayan
    
    =========================================================================
We have a 3D input device (special mouse) that we use to collect data into our
system.  It feeds data in through a serial port.  Currently on the DEC Alpha,
we use code that reads the data into the program directly from the serial port.
 On the SGI however, we were able to write a streams module that took data from
the serial port and converted the data into the format expected by the XServer.
 We added the streams module as an XDevice to the Xserver.  Using the XInput
extensions, we were able to receive motion and input events from the device as
XEvents (XDeviceMotionEvent etc.).  More importantly, we are able to allow our
3D mouse device to replace the standard mouse as the XPointer device.  This
allows a user of our 3D mouse to change from a mode where the device events
from our 3D mouse are being received by our program only, to a mode where the
Xwindows pointer is being moved by our 3D mouse.  Our 3D mouse can then be used
to select menu items etc.  The user can then switch back so that the standard
mouse is the XPointer device and the events from our 3D mouse are only being
processed by our program.

    ===========================================================================

    The X Input extension is supported by Digital UNIX.  The best
    documentation on the extension is what comes from the X Consortium. 
    We've not documented how to use it in the Digital UNIX books.
    
    Irene