CCing the bug Back, I guess your point of view might be shared by other
users.
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 01:04:48AM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
Ian> The desktops have their GUI tools to configure that, but guess
Ian> what? None of the desktops goes beyond the most trivial settings,
Ian> in the case of Gnome I think it's just left-handed vs right-handed
Ian> and that's it. So, still unusable without manual configuration.
Ian> And what if I don't use a desktop?
Julien> That's probably a regression in GNOME, as last year, upstream
Julien> was blogging about GNOME configuration [1], and it was exposing
Julien> most of the features.
Judging by the direction of Gnome for the past few years, this
"regeression" won't be fixed. In any case, see the last sentence ...
That's unfortunate, and opposed to X input maintainer's wishes, see the
one before last paragraph of:
http://who-t.blogspot.com/2010/06/keyboard-configuration-its-complicated.html
Ian> And I'm leaving out the keyboard which has similar issues, and also
Ian> similar nonsolutions.
Julien> FWIW both keyboard and mouse configuration is explained in X
Julien> Strike Force's documentation [2], and you don't need an
Julien> xorg.conf, but only some snippets.
I had tried keyboard-configuration. Again, it doesn't get close to the
level of flexibility I want. How do I set the Pause key as Compose?
I keep doing that with an Xmodmap file, and praying that my way will
continue to work.
I'm sorry I didn't study that much about keyboard yet, I think setxkbmap
is the preferred tool now, but I don't know much about it. At least not
more than Xmodmap that I don't use ;)
Ian> Go ahead and remove dexconf, better no tool than a totally broken
Ian> one, but please consider adding a flexible, transparent and
Ian> desktop-independent tool to configure the above.
Julien> Doesn't your-favorite-editor and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ fill that
Julien> gap ?
First, there is no such directory on my system. I see that it is
mentioned in the manpage, but without it being created by the package
(even if empty) I simply didn't know a split configuration was possible
for the X server. It certainly wasn't so in XFree86.
I think that's a point, this directory should probably be created.
Second, yes, in general and for a random package, I am quite capable of
writing a configuration file by hand. The X server is different. Why?
Because the hierarchical, bottom-up format of the file forces me to
write the entire configuration, reproducing all the defaults even in the
parts totally unrelated to what I'm trying to customize. For instance,
to modify the synaptics behavior, I cannot simply write a Pointer
section and be done. To get it used, I have to have a ServerLayout
section, therefore I also need a Screen section, and once I have one I
better get all the most obscure settings there right.
Well basically this is not true anymore, you can write 'just' the
synaptics configuration, as explained in the doc I pointed to you earlier.
And even without /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ you can write partial xorg.conf
now, with just your synaptics configuration in it for instance.
But I guess this need a little more advertising ;)
This is the only reason I am begging for a tool to generate the
configuration. The availability of xorg.conf.d doesn't seem to change
this; correct me if I'm wrong.
Julien> My two cents,
Thanks for an informative, snark-less reply.
Basically there are still more than 500 bugs to triage, so I guess
spending time on video drivers bugs is more important than spending time
on user missconfiguration... Especially when the time has been spent to
write the doc already. But the doc might need some improvements, as
always, patches are welcome ;)
Hope this helps,