Re: [AD] Triggers under Linux

[Beoran <beoran@xxxxxxxxxx>]

With game input devices it's not only Linux that is messed up.
On windows you have 4 incompatible joystick api's each with
different limits to their capabilities. On OSX you have 3 APIs,
with only one that supports force feedback in theory,
but it has no drivers at all, so it's useless.

And on all platforms, the mapping of the elements of physical devices
through the driver is all messed up. I guess it's because it's "only" game
devices, so no one cares enough... :( So perhaps the best we can do is
to have a relatively leaky abstraction on top of this big mess.

As for the current Allegro API, AFAIK the intent was for buttons to be
made pressure sentitive, so that's why the range is that of a signed 
short.
I don't know why the axes have float values in stead of a similar 
integer value,
but I agree it's inconsistent.  I don't agree that pressed buttons 
should report 1
as a value, it should either be 1.0, or alternatively the range of an 
axis should be
-32k...+32k. Both changes would not be backwards compatible, though, so,
it's something for the next version of allegro, I guess?


Kind Regards, B.