Well now that we have one input api that can happen. Of course with 
graphics its much more diverse with what you can do. That is one of the 
reasons for so many graphics libraries. It would be really hard to write
a one size fits all library when it comes to graphics.

Note that I am NOT talking about a graphics library. This has NO
BUSINESS doing any kind of rendering. It's only the userland interface
to the underlying kernel drivers as far as mode switching & geometry
is concerned. That's _ALL_. In the same  was as libGL is the userland
interface to DRI, or iptables the userlnad interface to netfilter,
etc...
 

By state machine I mean the physical hardware state. If it's hardware 
access then it should be in the kernel. Note I'm refering to mode setting 
not acceleration. Now EDID overrides per monitor model and saving the 
state to disk is different. That should be userland. 

I agree. The HW access is done in kernel space. That's even true for
acceleration actually. You are mixing things. What I'm taking about
is exactly that: The userland library gets the various EDID & other
probing informations coming from the kernel drivers. It does the various
policy decisions on mode setting, it provides the API for userland to
deal with mode setting & monitor placement (what I call geometry)
and saving/restoring of configurations. The actual banging of the mode
to the HW is done by the kernel driver though. (The card specific back
end of the library probably builds either a mode description or a
register list and pass that to the kernel driver).

I think we are fine for whats in the kernel. As for multiple head and 
geometry stuff its not that hard if done right. I have been using 
multi-head systems for years. I have multip desktop systems for years!!!

I have been using multi head systems for years and I've seen how good
it can be, but also a bunch of the pitfalls when trying to design a
driver for it. If it was that easy, we would have had the right support
in fbdev for ages. We don't.

Ben.



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