Re: [PATCH 6/8] rfkill: add the WWAN radio type

[Ivo van Doorn]

On Saturday 12 April 2008, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Apr 2008, Ivo van Doorn wrote:
> > On Friday 11 April 2008, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > > Unfortunately, instead of adding a generic Wireless WAN type, a technology-
> > > specific type (WiMAX) was added.  That's useless for other WWAN devices,
> > > such as EDGE, UMTS, X-RTT and other such radios.
> > 
> > Then perhaps we should replace WiMAX with the WWAN type?
> 
> And have KEY_WIMAX interact with WWAN, or rename KEY_WIMAX to KEY_WWAN as
> well?
> 
> I do think it should be OK to do both renames, since it is very unlikely
> that a device would have keys for WIMAX and WWAN at the same type.  We
> don't even have to rename KEY_WIMAX, we can have KEY_WWAN and KEY_WIMAX map
> both to the same keycode.
> 
> Inaky?

I would say rename, having multiple key definitions mapped to the same keycode 
sounds like a bad idea to me.

> > > Add a WWAN rfkill type for generic wireless WAN devices.  No keys are added
> > > as most devices use KEY_RADIO for WWAN control and need no specific keycode
> > > added.
> > 
> > In the discussion around the WiMAX addition I do remember people wanted
> > it to have a seperate key code because it was "different technology". Wouldn't that
> > be the same for all WWAN technologies?
> 
> IMO, this is an USER INTERFACE part of the kernel.  The user will either
> interact with radios one-by-one (and the rfkill class provides this anyway,
> even without separate types), or he will want to deal with abstract
> concepts: "all radios", "wireless wan", "wireles lan", "personal-space
> radios (UWB, BT)"...
> 
> I.e. I am not even sure we should have UWB and BT as separate types...  but
> naming UWB "Bluetooth" would be wrong, too, so a proper fix there is harder
> (breaks stable ABI with userspace).
> 
> > Aka, should the WiMAX keycode be changed to a WWAN keycode in input.h
> > and then be used for all WWAN rfkill switches?
> 
> I'd think so.
> 
> We can add a desc field to rfkill with a more human-friendly, not required
> to be unique, description of the switch.
> 
>  e.g.:  "Intel WiMAX 1234 radio switch"
>         "ThinkPad builtin bluetooth switch"
> 
> and so on.  It will be far more useful than making the switch type a
> technology-granular thing.  And it will be useful for GUIs in userspace.

Sounds good.

Ivo
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