On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Tuukka Toivonen wrote: > I don't think so: in a generic plugin system, parts of the driver could be > moved into userspace plugins. is it a safe and secure way? > It's not just format conversion: there certainly is/will be hardware that > needs complex image processing and filtering for the incoming video, and > likely some features computed from the video image need to be fed back to > the driver to control the camera. ...yes, DNS required everyday.... we need to incorporate bind into the kernel... OH! a receive emails all day round... hm... and XWindow... > For example, I get mjpeg-compressed video from the camera that I need to > uncompress and compute the image brightness. The brightness then controls > the camera exposure time. Another example: automatic focus control. it is very specific things. why not the side library? > Besides, users have asked me to implement things like flipping image upside > down in the driver, because they have mounted the camera into ceiling or > something. With a proper plugin system, this should be possible with all > video applications by just editing ~/.gstreamer.conf or something to tell > the pipeline that "insert somewhere a flip plugin". plugin system means, that driver is isolated from other kernel parts. drivers have exclusive access to the memory and BUSes (it is fast and unsafe). if it is a user-level driver, maybe, it is a good idea. but it is not a kernel SU level, and there is a need for a driver in such space (or, maybe, I'm not correct). and, really, user-space driver a wrapper library in that case.
