[gpm]Seeking help for gpm-repeater like device for Linux joysticks!

[Piotr Sawuk]

"B. Douglas Hilton" wrote:
> 

> center point with ministicks which are becoming the de-facto standard for game pads. What is needed
> is a cubic transform like this:
> 
>    f = pow( x / 32768, 1/3 ) * 32768

I guess one could add this into the kernel-sources for now.
also, I guess something like (x*32768^2)^1/3 would be faster
and more accurate...
> 

> scrutinizing the gpm code. An important aspect is we only want to filter joystick axes, but not hat
> axes, and not button presses or dial events. Also, maybe the user would only want to filter one or
> two axes.

well, I do have such a gamepad, but there aren't much linux-games
actually making use of the analogue-capabilities. much more interesting
would be to alter other joystick-behaviour, like adding new buttons
(i.e. assigning a new button-name to some button-axis combinations),
making axes less square but round instead (i.e. diagonal movement
should not result in min(x,y) but in (x^2+y^2)^1/2 for treshhold
and dead-zone calculations), make movement more smooth, and so on.
> 
> I have subscribed to the list in the meantime while I investigate this project. I think you guys
> could do something like this easy, and I think that your mouse repeater technology is highly
> appropriate for this.

I'm new here too, but I do not think gpm is the right place. it would
be nice to turn my mouse into a joystick (for example for some space
fighting games for people who are used to playing the wing-commander
series with the mouse), and it would be nice to transform some
joystick-axes into additional buttons (for example transforming the
analogue throttle-control into the 4 buttons used for full, 3/4,
1/2 and 1/4 speed), but considering the lack of such games in linux
I would rather start out with joy2key or sdl or something, than
actually producing joystick-signals. it would be great if the
game-programmer would offer a list of functionality which can be
triggered through the input-device, and which functions collide
with other functions, and then leave the configuration to some
external program. (for example you just can't jump and crouch
at the same time in most games so if the configuration-program
knows that 2 buttons are handled with the same finger it might
assign those functions to those buttons. another example would
be assigning one button to 2 functions, like for example swimming
up and jumping on the same button since you can't jump under water...)
such a thing would be far beyond any gpm-alike program. also, it
could be that some users might think that your axis-transformation
should be defined on a per-game basis, as maybe some games would
do the same thing on their own...

what would fit into gpm is better control over mouse-speed, but
even that is handled externally by vgalib or X. I think the future
of GPM should be on the console with menues, paste-history, adding
keys to the queque, displaying info and executing root-commands.
I would wish better support for new mice in gpm, with all their
buttons and wheels getting an own functionality, and better
configurability of buttons and such. as the repeater-protocol
I'm using "raw" anyway...

a gpm-alike utility for joysticks would only make sense if it
could offer the same additional functionality on the console.
selecting and pasting with the joystick is too difficult with
gpm, some improvements might be neccessary there. the joystick
does have more axes than a mouse, or at least more buttons.
for example I could imagine some more keyboard-alike handling
of selecting text with a joystick where some buttons or hat-axes
would move the cursor, some other buttons might select or act
as a modifyer for selecting, some other button might be a modifyer
for going back or forward by whole words or sentences, and so on...

P