Make EVDEV a driver which is acutally useful

[ManDay]

I'm deperately trying to solve a real world problem that is. Many
applications do not have such sophisticated methods to use input devices
(in my case: GIMP). If X/evdev gave me the option to arbitrarily remapw
anything to anything (or just axes->buttons, for that matter) it would
solve this problem for all these programs alltogether. the problem i see
with evdev is simply that its not gerenic enough. i said that evdev has
no "proper" support for enhanced devices because most of its options can
only be used for X and Y axes and nothing beyond.

--MD


On 08/30/2010 01:13 AM, Peter Hutterer wrote:/
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 02:48:22PM +0200, ManDay wrote:
>> Currently the EVDEV driver for axes-input-devices has just a few
>> pathetic options which are at best suitable for a mouse. But since there
>> are more input devices beyond mice and 2 axes joystick X appears to have
>> no proper support for them, whatsoever.
> 
> what's your basis for the "appears to have no proper support" argument?
> evdev takes whatever the kernel provides, labels axes accordingly and
> forwards events. Please provide an actual use-case of what is broken right
> now, I'm quite happy to get evdev fixed for that case.
> 
>> Since last time I contacted the list with that issue, where I was more
>> concerned about getting a generic HID driver which can handle it all
>> properly, people were little eager to get into that, I think I'll try
>> with something easier which even I could try myself at.
>>
>> The only aim I set myself so far is supporting an arbitrary amount of
>> axes in analogy to evdevs XYAxisMapping.
>>
>> That means, an arbitrary axis can emulate a button (or eky, for that
>> matter) of one's choice. It shouldn't be too difficult, generalizing
>> what evdev does for two axes already.
> 
> why do you need this? mapping axes to buttons comes at a cost (maintaining
> that code) and there's a high chance that this option should rather be
> supported in the clients than in the driver.
> 
>> I hope you guys can give me tips where to start or whatever you can
>> think of. Should I enhance the evdev driver to become more generic and
>> support an arbitrary amount of axes or would it be better to write
>> something like xmodmap which cannot only remap key but can also map
>> keys/buttons to motion events?
>>
>> So I get a motion even, say a 6 tuple and translate it to an arbitrarily
>> reformatted motion event plus additional keystrokes.
>>
>> if such a tool already exists it would be great, if not i think it will
>> be extremely useful and can do almost anything you want, not to mention
>> will deprecate the pathetic evdev and xmodmap.
> 
> again, _why_ do you want to do this? the wording chosen make it appear like
> you're doing it out of academic interest, not to solve a real-world problem.
> I care much more about the latter than the former.
> 
> Cheers,
>   Peter
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