diff options
author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 18:20:36 -0400 |
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committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 18:20:36 -0400 |
commit | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 (patch) | |
tree | 0bba044c4ce775e45a88a51686b5d9f90697ea9d /Documentation/input/joystick-api.txt |
Linux-2.6.12-rc2v2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
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1 | Joystick API Documentation -*-Text-*- | ||
2 | |||
3 | Ragnar Hojland Espinosa | ||
4 | <ragnar@macula.net> | ||
5 | |||
6 | 7 Aug 1998 | ||
7 | |||
8 | $Id: joystick-api.txt,v 1.2 2001/05/08 21:21:23 vojtech Exp $ | ||
9 | |||
10 | 1. Initialization | ||
11 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
12 | |||
13 | Open the joystick device following the usual semantics (that is, with open). | ||
14 | Since the driver now reports events instead of polling for changes, | ||
15 | immediately after the open it will issue a series of synthetic events | ||
16 | (JS_EVENT_INIT) that you can read to check the initial state of the | ||
17 | joystick. | ||
18 | |||
19 | By default, the device is opened in blocking mode. | ||
20 | |||
21 | int fd = open ("/dev/js0", O_RDONLY); | ||
22 | |||
23 | |||
24 | 2. Event Reading | ||
25 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
26 | |||
27 | struct js_event e; | ||
28 | read (fd, &e, sizeof(struct js_event)); | ||
29 | |||
30 | where js_event is defined as | ||
31 | |||
32 | struct js_event { | ||
33 | __u32 time; /* event timestamp in milliseconds */ | ||
34 | __s16 value; /* value */ | ||
35 | __u8 type; /* event type */ | ||
36 | __u8 number; /* axis/button number */ | ||
37 | }; | ||
38 | |||
39 | If the read is successful, it will return sizeof(struct js_event), unless | ||
40 | you wanted to read more than one event per read as described in section 3.1. | ||
41 | |||
42 | |||
43 | 2.1 js_event.type | ||
44 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
45 | |||
46 | The possible values of ``type'' are | ||
47 | |||
48 | #define JS_EVENT_BUTTON 0x01 /* button pressed/released */ | ||
49 | #define JS_EVENT_AXIS 0x02 /* joystick moved */ | ||
50 | #define JS_EVENT_INIT 0x80 /* initial state of device */ | ||
51 | |||
52 | As mentioned above, the driver will issue synthetic JS_EVENT_INIT ORed | ||
53 | events on open. That is, if it's issuing a INIT BUTTON event, the | ||
54 | current type value will be | ||
55 | |||
56 | int type = JS_EVENT_BUTTON | JS_EVENT_INIT; /* 0x81 */ | ||
57 | |||
58 | If you choose not to differentiate between synthetic or real events | ||
59 | you can turn off the JS_EVENT_INIT bits | ||
60 | |||
61 | type &= ~JS_EVENT_INIT; /* 0x01 */ | ||
62 | |||
63 | |||
64 | 2.2 js_event.number | ||
65 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
66 | |||
67 | The values of ``number'' correspond to the axis or button that | ||
68 | generated the event. Note that they carry separate numeration (that | ||
69 | is, you have both an axis 0 and a button 0). Generally, | ||
70 | |||
71 | number | ||
72 | 1st Axis X 0 | ||
73 | 1st Axis Y 1 | ||
74 | 2nd Axis X 2 | ||
75 | 2nd Axis Y 3 | ||
76 | ...and so on | ||
77 | |||
78 | Hats vary from one joystick type to another. Some can be moved in 8 | ||
79 | directions, some only in 4, The driver, however, always reports a hat as two | ||
80 | independent axis, even if the hardware doesn't allow independent movement. | ||
81 | |||
82 | |||
83 | 2.3 js_event.value | ||
84 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
85 | |||
86 | For an axis, ``value'' is a signed integer between -32767 and +32767 | ||
87 | representing the position of the joystick along that axis. If you | ||
88 | don't read a 0 when the joystick is `dead', or if it doesn't span the | ||
89 | full range, you should recalibrate it (with, for example, jscal). | ||
90 | |||
91 | For a button, ``value'' for a press button event is 1 and for a release | ||
92 | button event is 0. | ||
93 | |||
94 | Though this | ||
95 | |||
96 | if (js_event.type == JS_EVENT_BUTTON) { | ||
97 | buttons_state ^= (1 << js_event.number); | ||
98 | } | ||
99 | |||
100 | may work well if you handle JS_EVENT_INIT events separately, | ||
101 | |||
102 | if ((js_event.type & ~JS_EVENT_INIT) == JS_EVENT_BUTTON) { | ||
103 | if (js_event.value) | ||
104 | buttons_state |= (1 << js_event.number); | ||
105 | else | ||
106 | buttons_state &= ~(1 << js_event.number); | ||
107 | } | ||
108 | |||
109 | is much safer since it can't lose sync with the driver. As you would | ||
110 | have to write a separate handler for JS_EVENT_INIT events in the first | ||
111 | snippet, this ends up being shorter. | ||
112 | |||
113 | |||
114 | 2.4 js_event.time | ||
115 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
116 | |||
117 | The time an event was generated is stored in ``js_event.time''. It's a time | ||
118 | in milliseconds since ... well, since sometime in the past. This eases the | ||
119 | task of detecting double clicks, figuring out if movement of axis and button | ||
120 | presses happened at the same time, and similar. | ||
121 | |||
122 | |||
123 | 3. Reading | ||
124 | ~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
125 | |||
126 | If you open the device in blocking mode, a read will block (that is, | ||
127 | wait) forever until an event is generated and effectively read. There | ||
128 | are two alternatives if you can't afford to wait forever (which is, | ||
129 | admittedly, a long time;) | ||
130 | |||
131 | a) use select to wait until there's data to be read on fd, or | ||
132 | until it timeouts. There's a good example on the select(2) | ||
133 | man page. | ||
134 | |||
135 | b) open the device in non-blocking mode (O_NONBLOCK) | ||
136 | |||
137 | |||
138 | 3.1 O_NONBLOCK | ||
139 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
140 | |||
141 | If read returns -1 when reading in O_NONBLOCK mode, this isn't | ||
142 | necessarily a "real" error (check errno(3)); it can just mean there | ||
143 | are no events pending to be read on the driver queue. You should read | ||
144 | all events on the queue (that is, until you get a -1). | ||
145 | |||
146 | For example, | ||
147 | |||
148 | while (1) { | ||
149 | while (read (fd, &e, sizeof(struct js_event)) > 0) { | ||
150 | process_event (e); | ||
151 | } | ||
152 | /* EAGAIN is returned when the queue is empty */ | ||
153 | if (errno != EAGAIN) { | ||
154 | /* error */ | ||
155 | } | ||
156 | /* do something interesting with processed events */ | ||
157 | } | ||
158 | |||
159 | One reason for emptying the queue is that if it gets full you'll start | ||
160 | missing events since the queue is finite, and older events will get | ||
161 | overwritten. | ||
162 | |||
163 | The other reason is that you want to know all what happened, and not | ||
164 | delay the processing till later. | ||
165 | |||
166 | Why can get the queue full? Because you don't empty the queue as | ||
167 | mentioned, or because too much time elapses from one read to another | ||
168 | and too many events to store in the queue get generated. Note that | ||
169 | high system load may contribute to space those reads even more. | ||
170 | |||
171 | If time between reads is enough to fill the queue and lose an event, | ||
172 | the driver will switch to startup mode and next time you read it, | ||
173 | synthetic events (JS_EVENT_INIT) will be generated to inform you of | ||
174 | the actual state of the joystick. | ||
175 | |||
176 | [As for version 1.2.8, the queue is circular and able to hold 64 | ||
177 | events. You can increment this size bumping up JS_BUFF_SIZE in | ||
178 | joystick.h and recompiling the driver.] | ||
179 | |||
180 | |||
181 | In the above code, you might as well want to read more than one event | ||
182 | at a time using the typical read(2) functionality. For that, you would | ||
183 | replace the read above with something like | ||
184 | |||
185 | struct js_event mybuffer[0xff]; | ||
186 | int i = read (fd, mybuffer, sizeof(struct mybuffer)); | ||
187 | |||
188 | In this case, read would return -1 if the queue was empty, or some | ||
189 | other value in which the number of events read would be i / | ||
190 | sizeof(js_event) Again, if the buffer was full, it's a good idea to | ||
191 | process the events and keep reading it until you empty the driver queue. | ||
192 | |||
193 | |||
194 | 4. IOCTLs | ||
195 | ~~~~~~~~~ | ||
196 | |||
197 | The joystick driver defines the following ioctl(2) operations. | ||
198 | |||
199 | /* function 3rd arg */ | ||
200 | #define JSIOCGAXES /* get number of axes char */ | ||
201 | #define JSIOCGBUTTONS /* get number of buttons char */ | ||
202 | #define JSIOCGVERSION /* get driver version int */ | ||
203 | #define JSIOCGNAME(len) /* get identifier string char */ | ||
204 | #define JSIOCSCORR /* set correction values &js_corr */ | ||
205 | #define JSIOCGCORR /* get correction values &js_corr */ | ||
206 | |||
207 | For example, to read the number of axes | ||
208 | |||
209 | char number_of_axes; | ||
210 | ioctl (fd, JSIOCGAXES, &number_of_axes); | ||
211 | |||
212 | |||
213 | 4.1 JSIOGCVERSION | ||
214 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
215 | |||
216 | JSIOGCVERSION is a good way to check in run-time whether the running | ||
217 | driver is 1.0+ and supports the event interface. If it is not, the | ||
218 | IOCTL will fail. For a compile-time decision, you can test the | ||
219 | JS_VERSION symbol | ||
220 | |||
221 | #ifdef JS_VERSION | ||
222 | #if JS_VERSION > 0xsomething | ||
223 | |||
224 | |||
225 | 4.2 JSIOCGNAME | ||
226 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
227 | |||
228 | JSIOCGNAME(len) allows you to get the name string of the joystick - the same | ||
229 | as is being printed at boot time. The 'len' argument is the length of the | ||
230 | buffer provided by the application asking for the name. It is used to avoid | ||
231 | possible overrun should the name be too long. | ||
232 | |||
233 | char name[128]; | ||
234 | if (ioctl(fd, JSIOCGNAME(sizeof(name)), name) < 0) | ||
235 | strncpy(name, "Unknown", sizeof(name)); | ||
236 | printf("Name: %s\n", name); | ||
237 | |||
238 | |||
239 | 4.3 JSIOC[SG]CORR | ||
240 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
241 | |||
242 | For usage on JSIOC[SG]CORR I suggest you to look into jscal.c They are | ||
243 | not needed in a normal program, only in joystick calibration software | ||
244 | such as jscal or kcmjoy. These IOCTLs and data types aren't considered | ||
245 | to be in the stable part of the API, and therefore may change without | ||
246 | warning in following releases of the driver. | ||
247 | |||
248 | Both JSIOCSCORR and JSIOCGCORR expect &js_corr to be able to hold | ||
249 | information for all axis. That is, struct js_corr corr[MAX_AXIS]; | ||
250 | |||
251 | struct js_corr is defined as | ||
252 | |||
253 | struct js_corr { | ||
254 | __s32 coef[8]; | ||
255 | __u16 prec; | ||
256 | __u16 type; | ||
257 | }; | ||
258 | |||
259 | and ``type'' | ||
260 | |||
261 | #define JS_CORR_NONE 0x00 /* returns raw values */ | ||
262 | #define JS_CORR_BROKEN 0x01 /* broken line */ | ||
263 | |||
264 | |||
265 | 5. Backward compatibility | ||
266 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
267 | |||
268 | The 0.x joystick driver API is quite limited and its usage is deprecated. | ||
269 | The driver offers backward compatibility, though. Here's a quick summary: | ||
270 | |||
271 | struct JS_DATA_TYPE js; | ||
272 | while (1) { | ||
273 | if (read (fd, &js, JS_RETURN) != JS_RETURN) { | ||
274 | /* error */ | ||
275 | } | ||
276 | usleep (1000); | ||
277 | } | ||
278 | |||
279 | As you can figure out from the example, the read returns immediately, | ||
280 | with the actual state of the joystick. | ||
281 | |||
282 | struct JS_DATA_TYPE { | ||
283 | int buttons; /* immediate button state */ | ||
284 | int x; /* immediate x axis value */ | ||
285 | int y; /* immediate y axis value */ | ||
286 | }; | ||
287 | |||
288 | and JS_RETURN is defined as | ||
289 | |||
290 | #define JS_RETURN sizeof(struct JS_DATA_TYPE) | ||
291 | |||
292 | To test the state of the buttons, | ||
293 | |||
294 | first_button_state = js.buttons & 1; | ||
295 | second_button_state = js.buttons & 2; | ||
296 | |||
297 | The axis values do not have a defined range in the original 0.x driver, | ||
298 | except for that the values are non-negative. The 1.2.8+ drivers use a | ||
299 | fixed range for reporting the values, 1 being the minimum, 128 the | ||
300 | center, and 255 maximum value. | ||
301 | |||
302 | The v0.8.0.2 driver also had an interface for 'digital joysticks', (now | ||
303 | called Multisystem joysticks in this driver), under /dev/djsX. This driver | ||
304 | doesn't try to be compatible with that interface. | ||
305 | |||
306 | |||
307 | 6. Final Notes | ||
308 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
309 | |||
310 | ____/| Comments, additions, and specially corrections are welcome. | ||
311 | \ o.O| Documentation valid for at least version 1.2.8 of the joystick | ||
312 | =(_)= driver and as usual, the ultimate source for documentation is | ||
313 | U to "Use The Source Luke" or, at your convenience, Vojtech ;) | ||
314 | |||
315 | - Ragnar | ||
316 | EOF | ||