Wayland Relative Pointer API Progress

[x414e54]

This is kinda completely derailed from the whole include mice in the
game controller protocol talk.

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 6:44 PM, Michal Suchanek <hramrach at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20 April 2015 at 10:48, Pekka Paalanen <ppaalanen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 20 Apr 2015 10:13:34 +0200
>> Michal Suchanek <hramrach at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 20 April 2015 at 09:36, Pekka Paalanen <ppaalanen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > On Sun, 19 Apr 2015 09:46:39 +0200
>>> > Michal Suchanek <hramrach at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> So the device is always absolute and interpretation varies.
>>> >
>>> > I disagree.
>>> >
>>> > Let's take a mouse, optical or ball, doesn't matter. What you get out
>>> > is a position delta over time. This is also know as velocity. Sampling
>>> > rate affects the scale of the values, and you cannot reasonably define
>>> > a closed range for the possible values. There is no home position. All
>>>
>>> There is a home position. That is when you do not move the mouse. The
>>> reading is then 0.
>>
>> That is not a unique position, hence it cannot be a home position. That
>> is only a unique velocity. By definition, if your measurement is a
>> velocity, it does not directly give you an absolute position.
>>
>> When we talk about absolute, we really mean absolute position.
>
> And what does absolute position of a sensor somewhere outside of the
> PC give you?
>
> A trackball and touchpad has as absolute position as joystick.
>
> Trackball measures velocity, touchpad finger position(s), joystick
> stick position.
>
> None of these is almost ever used for absolute input mapping
> particular reading of a sensor to a particular screen coordinate.
>
>>
>>> > A mouse could be an absolute device only if you were never able to lift
>>> > it off the table and move it without it generating motion events. This
>>> > is something you cannot do with an absolute device like a joystick.
>>>
>>> You are too much fixed on the construction of the sensor. Mouse is a
>>> velocity sensor similar to some nunchuck or whatever device with
>>> reasonable precision accelerometer. That you can and do lift it off
>>> the table is only relevant to how you use such sensor in practice.
>>
>> Accelerometers measure acceleration. Acceleration, like velocity, is
>> not a position. It does not give you an absolute position directly.
>
> And what is practical impact of accelerometers not giving an absolute
> position compared to joystick?

You can warp a relative motion cursor but cannot warp an absolute
position cursor.

Warping a relative motion cursor is still a UX pain because you may be
at the edge of your physical reach but warping an absolute position
cursor is actually an offset and may make the interface unusable.

>
> Joystick can stay in an extreme position, mouse cannot. But if you
> take a nunchuck attached to a string and rotate it above your head the
> reading stays in an extreme position all the same.
>
> There is no sense in saying the sensor reading itself as absolute or
> relative. Either gives you some number in unknown units which you
> calibrate to get usable results. You have no idea where the stick is
> from the numbers you get. And there is absolutely no point caring. It
> may have some sense for a particular application and no sense for
> other.

One of my original points was that a user should be able to hot-swap a
mouse and a gamepad thumbstick without a game caring and that games do
not care about mice/joystick/touchpad they just want raw axis values
that they can use, evdev makes this abstraction.

But you certainly need to know if the axis is relative or absolute to
convert it to what the application needs.

>
> Thanks
>
> Michal