[Fw_Os_Forum] How to detect devices that support touch

Aaron.Pop at congatec.com Aaron.Pop at congatec.com
Wed Mar 16 13:26:15 EDT 2016


Hi Venkat,

You are right, It appears that your BIOS's console splitter does not 
contain a virtual absolute pointer device instance. 

It also appears that your system has two absolute pointer device attached, 
a usb based device and another (maybe an on screen software keyboard, or a 
i2c device).

If you are trying to use the absolute pointer devices in your preboot 
application, this means you have more work to do.  You will have to 
perform the mapping from the touch screen devices to overlay to the screen 
resolution in the same way that the consplitter's abs pointer would have. 


Best Personal Regards,

Aaron Pop
Senior Software Engineer

Phone: +1 858-457-2600 Ext. 705
Fax: +1 858-457-2602  |  Email: Aaron.Pop at congatec.com


congatec, Inc.  |  6262 Ferris Square  |  San Diego CA  92121  |  USA  |  
www.congatec.us

Any e-mail sent from congatec may contain information which is 
confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not
disclose, copy or use it; please notify the sender immediately and delete 
this e-mail and any copies from your systems.




From:   Venkat Gorla <venkatagorla at gmail.com>
To:     Aaron.Pop at congatec.com, 
Cc:     fw_os_forum at mailman.uefi.org, fw_os_forum-bounces at mailman.uefi.org
Date:   03/15/2016 03:07 AM
Subject:        Re: [Fw_Os_Forum] How to detect devices that support touch



Hi Aaron,

Yes, that is what I tried.

Below is a listing of all the handles and protocols supported on them, on 
one of the touch devices that we are using for testing.

May be it will provide some additional insight into the issues we are 
facing.

Thanks,
Venkat 

Handles returned via LocateHandle specifying "absolute pointer protocol" 
as the search criteria:
# Handles: 2
** Listing protocols for handle 0:
Protocols: 9
0xC7A7030C // Unknown
0x8D59D32B // Absolute pointer
0x31878C87 // Simple pointer
0x0ADFB62D // AMI_EFIKEYCODE_PROTOCOL_GUID
0xDD9E7534 // Simple text input ex protocol
0x387477C1 // Simple text input protocol
0x1FEDE521 // Unknown
0x09576E91 // Device path protocol
0x2B2F68D6 // USB IO protocol

** Listing protocols for handle 1:
Protocols: 2
0x09576E91 // Device path protocol
0x8D59D32B // Absolute pointer

** Listing protocols from ConsoleInHandle:
Protocols: 7
0x31878C87 // Simple pointer
0x0ADFB62D // AMI_EFIKEYCODE_PROTOCOL_GUID
0xDD9E7534 // Simple text input ex protocol
0x387477C1 // Simple text input protocol
0xF42F7782 // Console control protocol
0x387477C2 // Simple text out protocol
0xB295BD1C // Unknown

In this protocol listing, you can see that absolute pointer protocol isn't 
listed on the console in handle which explains the "OpenProtocol" function 
call failure.




On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 11:54 PM, <Aaron.Pop at congatec.com> wrote:
Hi Venkat, 

It sounds like your OpenProtocol call is failing, because EFI_UNSUPPORTED 
is returned when the protocol is not found on the device handle.  Is your 
open protocol formatted like the below snippet? 


Status = gBS->OpenProtocol( gST->ConInHandle, 
                            &gEfiAbsolutePointerProtocolGuid, 
                            &AbsolutePointerProtocol, 
                            gImageHandle, 
                            NULL, 
                            EFI_OPEN_PROTOCOL_BY_HANDLE_PROTOCOL); 


Best Personal Regards, 

Aaron Pop 
Senior Software Engineer 

Phone: +1 858-457-2600 Ext. 705 
Fax: +1 858-457-2602  |  Email: Aaron.Pop at congatec.com 


congatec, Inc.  |  6262 Ferris Square  |  San Diego CA  92121  |  USA  |  
www.congatec.us 

Any e-mail sent from congatec may contain information which is 
confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not 
disclose, copy or use it; please notify the sender immediately and delete 
this e-mail and any copies from your systems. 




From:        Venkat Gorla <venkatagorla at gmail.com> 
To:        Aaron.Pop at congatec.com, 
Cc:        fw_os_forum at mailman.uefi.org, 
fw_os_forum-bounces at mailman.uefi.org 
Date:        03/08/2016 01:41 AM 
Subject:        Re: [Fw_Os_Forum] How to detect devices that support touch 




Hi Aaron, 

Thanks for your suggestions. 

Using the UEFI shell, I listed all the handles in the database of my touch 
device and the console splitter is listed in the output - along with the 
absolute pointer protocol. 

However when I call OpenProtocol using gST->ConsoleInHandle, I am 
getting EFI_UNSUPPORTED error. 

Venkat  


On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 4:50 PM, Venkat Gorla <venkatagorla at gmail.com> 
wrote: 
Hi Aaron, 

I spoke a bit too soon regarding the usage of EDK in my product. 

Browsing the code repository of my product, I just discovered that EDK is 
already available :) 

I am now actively investigating how I can incorporate  the suggestions 
that you provided regarding EDK. 

Thanks much, 
Venkat  


On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 4:05 PM, Venkat Gorla <venkatagorla at gmail.com> 
wrote: 
Thanks Aaron, for the detailed explanation. That was really helpful. 

I am new to the UEFI world and still trying to get the hang of it. 

It seems EDK and the console splitter absolute pointer abstraction that 
you described, is an open source development environment for the UEFI 
specification. Unfortunately we have some very tight restrictions in our 
company when it comes to using open source components in our shipping 
products. As such using EDK right now isn't a realistic option for me. 

The idea itself is very interesting though; what is the best/ recommended 
way to get the handle for a device that supports the absolute pointer 
protocol? If there is something that can be done using just the UEFI 
specification, please let me know. 

Btw, to get the array of handles for the absolute pointer protocol in my 
code, I am calling EFI API LocateHandle(). There is also a related API 
called LocateHandleBuffer(). The only difference between these functions 
seems to be whose responsibility it is to allocate space for the handle 
buffer array. Otherwise, functionally they seem to be the same. 

Please let me know if there is reason to be using one function over the 
other. 

Venkat  

On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 11:56 PM, <Aaron.Pop at congatec.com> wrote: 
Hi Venkat, 

Your original question was "How do I determine if I have a physical touch 
device attached to the system?".  Locating a handle buffer of absolute 
pointer protocols and going through the handles to determine if any of 
them contain a device path will answer that. 

If, however, you want to interact with the absolute pointer devices, then 
you should only use the absolute pointer protocol that does not have a 
device path. 

The console splitter, which I described in the previous email, collects 
all absolute pointer devices under a single abstracted absolute pointer 
protocol interface.  It abstracts away the information regarding the 
current settings of the screen. I'll give you a case to help understand 
what I mean. 

Consider that you have two touch screen devices attached to the system. 
The first is a digitizer that sit on top of the monitor, and the second is 
a tablet like device (like a wacom tablet).  Each of these touch devices 
installs their own absolute pointer instance with their own 
EFI_ABSOLUTE_POINTER_MODE interface descriptions.  The monitor touch 
screen device returns absoluteX and absoluteY information that is not tied 
to the current video resolution (i.e absolutex is 800, absolutey is 600, 
and the monitor is currently in 1920x1080 resolution).   If you attempt to 
use this data directly, then you will only be able to access 800x600 of 
hte total 1920x1080 resolution.  This same limitation will be experienced 
with the wacom device.   

The console splitter's absolute pointer protocol abstraction has 
information about the current video display resolution, and it will 
perform a translation of the individual device's absolute pointer 
information to map the information into the current display resolution.  
For example, if the monitor's absolute pointer returns that the display is 
at pixel 799x599, then that would be mapped by the console splitter to 
approximately the 1919x1079 pixel. 

So to answer your second question, you should not be enumerating handles 
when you want to use an absolute pointer. You should be using the absolute 
pointer protocol from the console splitter, which can be retrieved by 
opening the protocol on the gST->ConInHandle. 

As to why your individual device is not working when you use the first 
handle in the handle buffer, I do not know.  It is probably something that 
you will have to investigate.  Are you sure that your device is conforming 
to the absolute pointer protocol description in the EFI specification?  
Are there any assumptions in your test code that conflict with the EFI 
specification?  Is there a bug in the EDK2 console splitter's absolute 
pointer abstraction (freely available to view online at 
https://github.com/tianocore/edk2 under 
MdeModulePkg/Universal/Console/ConSplitterDxe). 





From:        Venkat Gorla <venkatagorla at gmail.com> 
To:        Aaron.Pop at congatec.com, 
Cc:        fw_os_forum at mailman.uefi.org, 
fw_os_forum-bounces at mailman.uefi.org 
Date:        03/04/2016 01:50 AM 
Subject:        Re: [Fw_Os_Forum] How to detect devices that support touch 





Thanks Aaron. Now when I get the list of handles, I am testing for the 
device path protocol in addition to the absolute pointer protocol. 

By doing so, I am able to filter out the negative scenarios. 

I have another related question on this topic. 

On some of the touch hardware on which we are testing our product changes, 
when enumerating the handles, if we select the first handle that has both 
absolute pointer protocol and device path protocol, it doesn't seem to 
function always -- touch events aren't being received. 

On the other hand, if we select the **last** handle that has both 
protocols, it seems to work always. 

So is there something about this first handle vs last handle that will 
explain this behavior? 

Venkat  

On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 11:38 PM, <Aaron.Pop at congatec.com> wrote: 
EDK implements a console splitter for input device.  This console splitter 
creates a absolute pointer protocol instance that does not contain a 
device path. 

You can locate a handle buffer of all the handles that contain an absolute 
pointer protocol, and then you can go through the handles and make sure 
that there is a handle that contains a device path.  If there are no 
absolute pointer instances that contain a device path. 





From:        Venkat Gorla <venkatagorla at gmail.com> 
To:        fw_os_forum at mailman.uefi.org, 
Date:        03/03/2016 01:06 AM 
Subject:        [Fw_Os_Forum] How to detect devices that support touch 
Sent by:        fw_os_forum-bounces at mailman.uefi.org 




Hello, 

We are making some product changes that are specific to touch devices 
(such as a tablet) in the Windows pre-boot UEFI environment. I am 
referring the following document for the UEFI specification: 
http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_3_1.pdf 

However I haven't been able to definitively check for touch devices vs 
non-touch devices using the specification. 

For example, querying for the absolute pointer protocol interface succeeds 
even on a non-touch device such as a laptop or a desktop. Additionally, 
the absolute max X and max Y values are also being reported as non-zero 
when I query the "Mode" of the protocol interface. 

So my question is how do I filter out the negative scenarios (devices that 
don't support touch) using the UEFI specification? 

Any pointers or help will is much appreciated. 

Thanks, 
Venkat _______________________________________________
Fw_os_forum mailing list
Fw_os_forum at mailman.uefi.org
http://lists.mailman.uefi.org/mailman/listinfo/fw_os_forum 





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