Re: [PATCH] Input: xpad: Spelling fixes for "Xbox", improve and proofread the listed xpad device names
From: Swyter <hidden>
Date: 2020-07-31 06:54:51
Also in:
linux-doc
On 31/07/2020 8:33, Cameron Gutman wrote:
quoted
While doing my research I also noticed that the 1532:0037 VID/PID seems to be used by the DeathAdder 2013, so that Razer Sabertooth instance looks wrong and very suspect to me, I created a separate patch for that.The above sentence probably doesn't belong in the commit message.
Fair enough, I should probably turn that into "reviewer" notes. I think I mentioned it because I didn't update that bad entry. Thinking it would be deleted soon. But good point.
The docs and comment changes look fine to me.
Great, I was a bit wary about this.
I'm somewhat concerned about the possibility of breaking userspace by changing names. Some programs' gamepad mappings may be dependent on matching the device names, rather than the VID+PID. For example, Android did not expose the VID and PID for input devices until Android 4.4. The device name was the only available attribute for matching gamepads from Android 2.3 to 4.3. While these ancient Android version will almost certainly never run a kernel with this patch, I worry about the possibility of apps that haven't moved to VID+PID matching (and not just for Android; I don't know if other libraries or frameworks have/had similar limitations). Perhaps my concerns are overblown, but If we aren't worried about changing names, I'd really prefer to just drop the hardcoded names entirely and use the manufacturer and product strings provided in the USB string descriptors. The device list would turn into a quirk list where only device entries with a special mapping flag like MAP_DPAD_TO_BUTTONS or MAP_TRIGGERS_TO_BUTTONS would remain, and the device name strings would just become comments on each quirk entry. Thoughts? Regards, Cameron
I don't doubt that changing some names will break some basic rule matching. But given that the kernel nomenclature is so inconsistent, I think anyone searching for "X-Box" and five other variants will also have to search for the actual "Xbox", or at least I hope so. Keep in mind that I have tried to make each overhauled entry *more* detailed when possible. So now each model has extra information (mainly manufacturer and button-layout type) instead only some vague/informal model name. SDL2 and Unity abstract these things a bit. I actually implement similar strings checks in my own game/engine as fallback and it's exactly what I ended up doing. I generally don't trust device strings, they'll be less detailed than these. A good bunch of those are unlicensed, so they'll be wrong or missing. Let me know what you think.