Merge commit 'v2.6.37-rc1' into for-2.6.37

[~andy/linux] / drivers / staging / frontier / README

diff --git a/drivers/staging/frontier/README b/drivers/staging/frontier/README
index 07c9ef9b8fc419ac887d3257499a197a34b9d0a1..cd07af22406a1841314bd7469f8920ff5b8df353 100644 (file)
--- a/drivers/staging/frontier/README
+++ b/drivers/staging/frontier/README
@@ -1,28 +1,47 @@
-This directory contains the USB Tranzport and Alphatrack Kernel drivers for Linux.
+This directory contains the Linux USB Tranzport and Alphatrack Kernel drivers.

 
 

-At present the tranzport does reads/writes of 8 byte cmds to /dev/tranzport0 to control
-the lights and screen and wheel
+See http://www.frontierdesign.com for details on these devices.

 
 

-At present the alphatrack accepts reads/writes of 12 byte cmds to /dev/tranzport0 to control
-the lights and screen and fader.
+Userspace test code is available from

 
 

-Both drivers also have some sysfs hooks that are non-functional at the moment.
+git://toutatis.isc.org/home/d/src/git/frontier.git

 
 

-The API is currently closely tied to the ardour revision and WILL change.
+At present the tranzport does reads/writes of 8 byte cmds to
+/dev/tranzport0 to control the lights, screen, and wheel.

 
 

-A sysfs interface is PERFECT for simple userspace apps to do fun things with the
-lights and screen. It's fairly lousy for handling input events and very lousy
-for watching the state of the shuttle wheel.
+At present the alphatrack accepts reads/writes of 12 byte cmds to
+/dev/tranzport0 to control the lights, screen, fader and touchpad.

 
 

-A linux input events interface is great for the input events and shuttle wheel. It's
-theoretically OK on LEDs. A Fader can be mapped to an absolute mouse device.
-But there is no LCD support at all.
+The tranzport driver provides a rudimentary sysfs interface for the status of
+the device and a writable parameter for turning wheel compression on and off.

 
 

-In the end this is going to be driven by a midi layer, which handles all those
-cases via a defined API, but - among other things - is slow, doesn't do
-flow control, and is a LOT of extra work. Frankly, I'd like to keep the
+The API is nothing more than the USB commands issued to the device. Why?
+
+The control wheel/fader can generate events far too quickly for
+a typical userspace application to keep up with them via libusb. Input
+needs to be 100% accurate and fast in order for the alphatrack or tranzport
+to be useful.
+
+UIO would be useful except that usb disconnect events need
+to be handled correctly.
+
+A sysfs interface is perfect for simple userspace apps to do fun things with
+the lights and screen. But it's fairly lousy for handling input events and
+very lousy for watching the state of the shuttle wheel.
+
+A linux input events interface is great for the input events and shuttle wheel.
+* It's theoretically OK on LEDs.
+* A fader can be mapped to an absolute mouse device.
+* But there is no LCD support at all, or fader feedback support in that API
+
+So, thus, these stubby drivers exist.
+
+In the end this could be driven by a midi layer, which handles all those
+cases via a well defined API, but - among other things - is slow, doesn't do
+flow control, and is a LOT of extra work, none of which is required at
+the kernel level (probably). Frankly, I'd like to keep the

 core driver simple because the only realtime work really required is
 the bottom half interrupt handler and the output overlapping.
 
 core driver simple because the only realtime work really required is
 the bottom half interrupt handler and the output overlapping.
 

-Exposing some sort of clean aio api to userspace would be perfect. What that
+Exposing some sort of clean api to userspace would be perfect. What that

 API looks like? Gah. beats me.
 API looks like? Gah. beats me.