Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
> 
> /dev/wskbd0: ok.
> /dev/wsms0: is not universal.
> 
> I don't want the mouse driver to listen to all serial ports at half a
> dozen bitrates and try to guess whether a serial mouse is connected,
> and at what bitrate, and with what protocol.

... so mandate that the mouse driver has to translate to a standard,
arbitrary protocol.  Pick something like the Mouse Systems protocol
(which is just nice because it's easy), and insist that everything
else remassage its bits to comply.

> Xnetbsd (it it is going to be universal) will need a -mouseDev
> /dev/xxx -mouseType someTypeCode parameter (it will be able to
> autodetect wsms events, but I dont see how this can be done reasonably
> for serial mice with 5.5 protocols at 6 different baud rates).

If you have a mouse driver shim, you needn't care about baudrates
or protocols.
 
> [It might be reasonable to provide a libmouse.so, which provides Event
> encoding for the different protocols... this will make e.g. mouse
> interfaces to userland text windowing systems easier.]

ie. stacking the protocol translation somewhere else.  IMHO that's
actually a better idea, as it lets you use any supported pointing
device on any platform that has a compatible interface.  Perhaps
look at the model that FreeBSD's moused(8) uses too, where you have
a user-space daemon that performs the translation and pukes the
results out on a standard mouse queue device.  (Don't go looking
to moused for code examples though, it's a fairly grubby individual.)
 
>         Ignatios

--
Mike Smith  *BSD hack  Unix hardware collector
The question "why are the fundamental laws of nature mathematical"
invites the trivial response "because we define as fundamental those
laws which are mathematical".  Paul Davies, _The_Mind_of_God_