Re: [PATCH] Expose input device usages to userspace

[Dmitry Torokhov <dtor_core@ameritech.net>]

On Monday 13 March 2006 16:02, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-03-13 at 21:54 +0100, Elias Naur wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I believe that the current event input interface is missing some kind of 
> > information about the general kind of input device (Mouse, Keyboard, Joystick 
> > etc.) so I added a simple ioctl to do just that. The relevant line in 
> > include/linux/input.h is:
> > 
> > #define EVIOCGUSAGE(len)    _IOC(_IOC_READ, 'E', 0x1c, len)         /* get all 
> > usages */
> > 
> > It returns a bit set with the device usages. Current usages are:
> > 
> > #define USAGE_MOUSE         0x00
> > #define USAGE_JOYSTICK      0x01
> > #define USAGE_GAMEPAD       0x02
> > #define USAGE_KEYBOARD      0x03
> 
> 
> I'm not sure that this is a good idea in general.
> However when you do it, at least make it a bitmap; things can be both a
> mouse and a keyboard for example.
> 

No, I don't think this is needed at all - users should be interested in
what capabilities a particular device has, not what type it was assigned
by soneone.

-- 
Dmitry