Does XOrg not have any proper HID support at all?

[Peter Hutterer]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 03:30:33PM +0200, Cedric Sodhi wrote:
> Ok, in all detail, I would not have neglected to describe the whole
> situation if I had known that you'd like to hear it - was just trying to
> keep it short, or, as I usually put it:
> 
> I was trying to keep it abstract to make it as hard as possible to find a
> solution.

next time, please detail your problem as good as you can instead of letting
others guess what you're trying to do. making it as hard as possible to find
a solution by supplying no details serves no purpose other than to waste
everyone's time.
 
> In my case the application I'm doing this for is The GIMP, but please be
> reminded that this is just an example and you could take any other
> application where such problem could occur. So please, even if you know
> that coming versions of the GIMP solve this or know another, GIMP sepcific
> solution to this, don't mention it, I'm looking for a generic XOrg
> specific way which solves this once and for good!
> 
> Particularily, I want to make a space-navigator device [1] control the
> view in the GIMP by MAPPING BUTTONS TO AXES, because the GIMP lacks native
> support to properly map axes to actions.
> 
> But usually anything interactive such as panning, scrolling, etc requires
> configuring a specific repeat-rate and of course, the button itsself.
> EVDev doesn't support proper repeat rates not to mention axes beyond X and
> Y.

evdev doesn't support mapping buttons to axis. the half-exception here is
the wheel code but that maps axes to buttons, not the other way round.

It's possible hook this up though as you mention there will be the need to
cater for repeat rates, delta handling, handling for multiple axes with
different repeat rates and deltas, and the handling of absolute axes vs.
relative axes when mapping to button events.

even then, you could only map to buttons, not whatever those
buttons will eventually do in the client.

so support for this would be quite intrusive. Since I think this is a rather
narrow use-case, feel free to submit a patch but please make sure it is as
clean as as possible. even then, i'm hesitant to apply this.

Cheers,
  Peter

> I hope this became very clear now.
> 
> PS: Please rule out other solutions, I've quite checked everything and X
> is not only the only possible options, it is also the GENERIC and THUS
> PREFFERED way of managing such a setup.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> [1] http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/spacenavigator.html
> 
> On 07/26/2010 02:11 PM, Daniel Stone wrote:
> >(Please don't drop the list from CC.)
> >
> >On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 01:04:10PM +0200, Cedric Sodhi wrote:
> >>Yes.
> >>
> >>In more detail: Evdev does not appear to have ANY mention of other axes
> >>besides X and Y in its config - which renderes it practically a mouse
> >>driver rather than anything HID related.
> >
> >What _exactly_ are you trying to do?
> >