1cc6e9087e
git-svn-id: svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/qjoypad/code/trunk@80 c05e91a0-76c8-4ec0-b377-ef19ce7cc080
QJoyPad 3 Documentation
Distributed with QJoyPad 3.4; available online at
http://qjoypad.sourceforge.net/doc/doc_index.html
Nathan Gaylinn
wren42@users.sourceforge.net
http://qjoypad.sourceforge.net
_________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. What is QJoyPad?
1.2. What's it good for?
1.3. Features
2. Getting Started
2.1. Requirements
2.2. Installation
3. Using QJoyPad
3.1. The Tray Icon
3.2. The Popup Menu
3.3. The Setup Dialog
3.3.1. The Layout Selection combo box
3.3.2. The Add button
3.3.3. The Remove button
3.3.4. The Update button
3.3.5. The Revert button
3.3.6. The Joystick buttons
3.3.7. The Joystick Component buttons
3.3.8. The Clear button
3.3.9. Quick Set
3.4. Configuring axes
3.4.1. The Axis Position Indicator
3.4.2. Making an axis "Gradient"
3.4.3. Switching between keyboard and mouse control
3.4.4. Adjusting mouse speed
3.4.5. Setting keys
3.4.6. Throttle Settings
3.5. Configuring buttons
3.5.1. Choosing a key / mouse button
3.5.2. Making a button "Sticky"
3.5.3. Using Rapid Fire
3.6. Command-line use and scripting
4. Layout Files
5. Problems
5.1. I can't get my game controller to work in Linux;
will QJoyPad help?
5.2. Joystick recognition
5.2.1. QJoyPad says it can't find any joysticks?
5.2.2. QJoyPad isn't showing all of my joysticks.
5.2.3. My joystick has more/fewer buttons/axes than
that!
5.3. Joystick adjustment
5.3.1. Why does it say I'm moving if I'm not?
5.3.2. I keep going in two directions at once
instead of just one!
5.3.3. I'm pushing up, but nothing's happening!
5.4. QJoyPad won't start!
5.5. I have two versions of QJoyPad open at once and
they're getting in each other's way!
5.6. I'm getting strange errors when I change layouts;
what's wrong?
5.7. This program only works in XWindows?
5.8. But my window manager doesn't HAVE a system tray!
5.9. I hate the QJoyPad icon. Is there any way to change
it?
5.10. Why do I have to tell QJoyPad to "update joystick
devices"? Why can't it do that on its own?
5.11. When QJoyPad checks for new joysticks, it doesn't
find mine!
5.12. Why are both Up and Down treated as the same axis?
5.13. All of this is too complicated. Why isn't there a
button for Up?
5.14. Features and suggestions
5.14.1. Why can't I click with an axis, or move the
mouse with a button?
5.14.2. Why doesn't QJoyPad do _____?
6. Credits
7. This software is GPL!
_________________________________________________________
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. What is QJoyPad?
QJoyPad is a convenient little program with a QT interface
that converts movement and button presses on a gamepad or
joystick into key presses, mouse clicks, and mouse movement in
XWindows. It should work on almost every Linux system and with
any Linux-supported gaming device.
_________________________________________________________
1.2. What's it good for?
QJoyPad lets you play any XWindows game that uses input from
the keyboard and mouse with a joystick device, even if the
game doesn't normally have joystick support. In addition, it's
a convenient companion for emulation software as it prevents
the need for extra controller plugins and can remember
multiple saved layouts. Also, QJoyPad can quickly swap between
layouts whenever you change games, so you'll always have the
controls right where you want them instead of compromising for
the game's defaults or the settings you find most useful in
other games. Now with version 3, QJoyPad also supports
features like rapid fire and sticky buttons (see Section
3.5.2) that can improve your gaming experience.
Not a gamer? Then QJoyPad can still be pretty useful if you
would find it more comfortable or convenient to control your
computer with a joystick or game pad. It may be designed with
gaming in mind, but it's a useful program for virtually any
purpose.
_________________________________________________________
1.3. Features
- Incorporates your gaming devices into any XWindows program
- Move and click the mouse with your joystick
- Auto-detects how many joysticks you have and how many
buttons and axes each supports
- Can detect joystick devices on the fly without restarting
- Support for devices with more than two axes
- Save as many layouts as you want and switch between them
quickly
- Swap layouts on the fly from the command line or from a
script
- Share layout files with your friends or even edit them by
hand for greater control
- Color cues quickly show you which buttons you're pressing
and which joystick you're using
- Set or reset all the keys at once in a flash
- Adjust the sensitivity of every axis independently
- Quietly hides in your system tray, running in the
background without taking up space
- For window managers without a system tray, QJoyPad can run
without the tray icon.
- Make an axis "Gradient" so that a light push does a little
and a harder push does more
- Support for throttle controls
- Make a button "Sticky" if you don't feel like holding it
down all the time
- Turn on Rapid Fire so you don't wear out your gamepad!
_________________________________________________________
Chapter 2. Getting Started
2.1. Requirements
- A Linux computer and a Linux-compatible gaming device
- A Linux kernel with joystick support (see the Linux Kernel
HOWTO [http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Kernel-HOWTO.html]
and the Linux joystick driver website
http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~vojtech/joystick/)
- XWindows (see www.xfree86.org)
- Trolltech's QT (see www.trolltech.com)
_________________________________________________________
2.2. Installation
Installing QJoyPad should be a quick and painless process. The
basic procedure is:
./config
make
make install
however, there are some settings that might need to be
changed.
1. Device directory: By default, QJoyPad will look for
joystick devices in /dev/input, but if your system puts
them somewhere else, you'll need to run ./config with the
argument --devdir=DIR, where DIR is where your joystick
devices reside. For instance, if your joystick devices are
/dev/js0, /dev/js1, etc., instead of running ./config, run
./config --devdir="/dev"
2. Install directory: By default, QJoyPad will try to put a
copy of itself in /usr/local/bin, some icons in
/usr/local/share/pixmaps, and this readme in
/usr/local/doc/qjoypad3 so that they will be accessible to
all users. If you want these files to go somewhere other
than /usr/local (or if you don't have permission to write
to /usr/local), you'll need to pass the argument
--prefix=DIR to ./config. For example, if you wanted to
install QJoyPad just for yourself in your home directory,
you could run ./config --prefix="/home/user" instead of
./config.
3. Use Plain Keys: Normally, QJoyPad doesn't use standard
XWindows key names to describe your keyboard, but instead
uses names that look nicer and are easier to recognize.
For instance, instead of "KP_Begin", "Prior", and
"Shift_L", QJoyPad uses "KP 5", "PageDown", and "L Shift".
If you think generating these names is a waste of
processor power, or if you don't think you're getting the
right name for the key you're pressing, pass the argument
--plain_keys to ./config and QJoyPad will just use the
XWindows default names.
Of course, you can mix use as many of these options at once as
you like. For instance ./config --devdir="/dev"
--prefix="/home/user" is completely valid.
_________________________________________________________
Chapter 3. Using QJoyPad
3.1. The Tray Icon
QJoyPad 3 is centered around the idea of a "tray icon", a
little icon that usually sits on your taskbar, out of the way;
when you first run QJoyPad, this is how it will be, just an
icon. If your window manager doesn't support system tray
icons, then you'll see QJoyPad as a tiny 24x24 window floating
around like any other window (see Section 5.8 ). since this
might be hard to work with, QJoyPad (starting with version
3.3) gives you the option of having a larger icon to work
with; just run qjoypad --notray and QJoyPad will use a larger
floating icon instead of a system tray icon.
By right clicking on the QJoyPad icon (it should look like an
old gamepad), you will get a pop-up menu that lets you switch
layouts (when you first install QJoyPad, there will be no
layouts available) and see some important information. To add
or modify layouts, left click the icon to open the Setup
Dialog.
_________________________________________________________
3.2. The Popup Menu
When you right click the QJoyPad icon, a menu should pop up.
The top of this menu shows you which joystick devices are
currently available (see Section 5.2 if not all your devices
are listed). Below that are the options to update the layout
list or the joystick devices; use these if you have just put a
new layout in ~/.qjoypad3 by hand or if you've plugged in a
new joystick device. Below even farther is a list of the
available layouts and the option to quit.
_________________________________________________________
3.3. The Setup Dialog
The following sections describe the parts of the Setup Dialog
going from the top down and from left to right.
_________________________________________________________
3.3.1. The Layout Selection combo box
At the top of the Setup Dialog is a combo box that says [NO
LAYOUT] to begin with, but as you add new layouts it will
serve as a drop-down list of all the layouts available to you.
_________________________________________________________
3.3.2. The Add button
The Add button adds a new layout to the list, asking you for a
meaningful name. Make the name short, simple, and easy to
remember, just in case you ever want to load the new layout
from the command line. You can use any name you like that
would be a legal filename on your computer (see Chapter 4 for
details.).
_________________________________________________________
3.3.3. The Remove button
The Remove button deletes the layout currently selected in the
combo box, losing it forever.
_________________________________________________________
3.3.4. The Update button
The Update button saves how the keys are currently set to the
current layout. Use this to make changes to an already-defined
layout. Don't forget to use Update to save any changes you
make before quitting or switching to another layout, or all
the changes will be forgotten!
_________________________________________________________
3.3.5. The Revert button
The Revert button does about the opposite of Update. If you've
gone and changed the keys around, pressing Revert will return
them to how they are saved in the current layout.
_________________________________________________________
3.3.6. The Joystick buttons
Immediately below the Add, Remove, Update, and Revert buttons,
there are several buttons labeled Joystick 1, Joystick 2, etc.
that serve as tabs so you can switch between different
controllers to set keys. Whichever one of these buttons is
pressed is the controller you are currently editing. Pressing
any button or moving any axis on a given controller will make
its associated button flash blue to let you know which it is.
_________________________________________________________
3.3.7. The Joystick Component buttons
Beneath the Joystick Buttons is a large pile of buttons
representing every axis and button on your controller.
Whenever you move the axis or push the button that one of
these buttons represents, it will flash blue so that you know
which it is. To setup any of these, just click on the
appropriate button and a dialog will pop up to let you choose
your settings.
_________________________________________________________
3.3.8. The Clear button
The Clear button resets all the axes and buttons to nothing,
essentially rendering the joystick disabled. From here it's
easy enough to set the buttons you need, starting from a clean
slate.
_________________________________________________________
3.3.9. Quick Set
The Quick Set button does exactly what you'd expect, it lets
you set all the buttons and axes quickly! When you click it,
it brings up a little window with a Done button, and until you
click Done it's watching the controller. Whenever you press a
button or move an axis, it will ask you which button you want
associated with that movement. You can't set all the extra
options this way, but it's much faster than going through all
the dialogs!
_________________________________________________________
3.4. Configuring axes
In QJoyPad 2, you were allowed one key to be assigned to each
of four directions, Up, Down, Left, and Right. In version 3,
there is support for many axes and each one can do fancier
things than just press a key. Unfortunately, since different
controllers do things differently, it's not as easy as Up,
Down, Left, and Right. Up-Down is an axis, Left-Right is an
axis, and if you have a nicer controller, you might have many
more axes on top of that.
The first step in configuring axes is to figure out which one
you want to set. If you have a joystick, try moving it around
and seeing which buttons flash blue on the QJoyPad Setup
Dialog. If you have a gamepad, try pressing different buttons
on the Directional-Pad or moving around any mini joystick
controls it might have. Once you know which axis you want to
set, click on its associated button to open the Set Axis
dialog.
_________________________________________________________
3.4.1. The Axis Position Indicator
In the middle of this dialog, you will see a white bar,
divided in two, that represents the current position of the
axis you're editing. Try moving that axis to see how it works.
This is so you know which direction is considered "positive"
and which is "negative"; it might not be what you'd expect. If
this axis is a D-Pad, then it is either off or on, but most
other axes are sensitive to how far they are depressed and a
colored bar here will show you how far it is at the moment.
Along the white bar, you will also see small blue and red tabs
that you can drag. These adjust the "Dead Zone" and the
"Extreme Zone" of the axis. When the colored bar representing
the axis' position passes one of the blue markers, the bar
will turn blue meaning that when the axis is this far QJoyPad
will consider it moved, and when the bar passes one of the red
markers it will turn red and QJoyPad will consider that axis
fully depressed. When the bar is gray, that means that you
haven't moved the axis out of its Dead Zone and QJoyPad is
ignoring its movement. To adjust where the Dead and Extreme
Zones are, just slide the blue and red markers to where you
think they should be.
You probably won't need to adjust the sensitivity unless you
are having trouble getting QJoyPad to generate key presses
when you want it to (see Section 5.3).
_________________________________________________________
3.4.2. Making an axis "Gradient"
On the upper half of this dialog, you will see a checkbox
marked Gradient. Checking this box means that instead of just
generating one key press when the axis is moved, QJoyPad will
start flickering that key on and off as soon as the axis is
out of the Dead Zone (when the colored bar turns blue). How
far the axis is pushed determines what percent of the time the
simulated key will be depressed. As soon as the axis enters
its Extreme Zone (when the colored bar turns red), the key
will be down 100% of the time. Making an axis Gradient is
useful if you want to use it as an accelerator in a game so
how fast you go is controlled by how far the axis is moved.
Also, it's nice to use this when the axis is set to move the
mouse because it can give you finer control of the mouse when
you push the axis just a little but still let you move quickly
when you push it all the way.
_________________________________________________________
3.4.3. Switching between keyboard and mouse control
On the upper half of the dialog, there is a combo box that
lets you choose between keyboard control and mouse control.
There are four different mouse options that let you choose
whether the mouse will move vertically (Up-Down) when the axis
moves or horizontally (Left-Right). You can also reverse the
direction of the mouse if you want moving the axis up to move
the mouse down or visa versa.
Tip
Usually you want an axis to be Gradient if it's going to move
the mouse.
_________________________________________________________
3.4.4. Adjusting mouse speed
When using one of the mouse modes, you can set the speed of
the mouse by adjusting the number in the upper right corner.
_________________________________________________________
3.4.5. Setting keys
When using keyboard mode, you can set which key corresponds to
which direction of the axis by clicking the buttons
immediately below the Axis Position Indicator. The one on the
left will be pressed when the axis is moved in the negative
direction (when the colored bar is on the left side) and the
one on the right when it is in the positive direction (when
the colored bar is on the right side).
_________________________________________________________
3.4.6. Throttle Settings
Between these two buttons is another combo box that changes
the throttle settings. This is meant for gamepads which have a
specific type of throttle control. What it does is instead of
having two keys for when the axis is positive or negative, it
has just one and treats the way the axis moves differently. In
one of the throttle modes, the axis will be considered
centered when it is all the way to one direction or the other.
_________________________________________________________
3.5. Configuring buttons
Similarly to the buttons corresponding to axes in the Setup
Dialog, the ones corresponding to the buttons on your
controller also light up to let you know which is which. To
figure out which button you want, press it on the game device
and then click on the button on screen that flashed. A small
settings dialog will pop up.
_________________________________________________________
3.5.1. Choosing a key / mouse button
At the top of this dialog is a button that you can click to
set which key or mouse button you want to associate with this
button on your controller. Just click on it, and the rest
should be self-explanatory.
_________________________________________________________
3.5.2. Making a button "Sticky"
Below this and to the left is a little checkbox marked Sticky.
When a button is set as Sticky, that means that pressing the
button once will make QJoyPad simulate a key press (or mouse
button press) and pressing that button again will make QJoyPad
release the simulated key. This is useful for racing games
where you're almost always pouring on the gas, or for RPGs
that have a button used for run, even though it's always
better to be running. This way, all you have to do is press
the button once and it's like you're holding it down. To let
the button back up, just press it a second time.
_________________________________________________________
3.5.3. Using Rapid Fire
Just next to the Sticky checkbox is another one marked Rapid
Fire. When this is enabled for a button, holding that button
down means that QJoyPad will flicker the associated key very
fast. This is great for space shooters where you want to fire
quickly but you don't want to break your button (or your
thumb!) from pressing over and over again.
Tip
Keep in mind that any button can be set both Sticky AND Rapid
Fire. This is even better for space shooters because this way
all you need to do is press the button once and from then
until you press it again you will be shooting Rapid Fire.
_________________________________________________________
3.6. Command-line use and scripting
Although QJoyPad only works in XWindows, it supports changing
axes on the fly from the command line. If you want to load up
the layout named "Tetris", all you have to do is run:
qjoypad "Tetris"
and one of two things will happen. If QJoyPad isn't currently
open, it will start running and load the "Tetris" layout (this
is case sensitive! see Chapter 4). If QJoyPad is already
running, it will just silently switch to the requested layout.
What's so great about this is it lets you forget about QJoyPad
once you've made all your layouts, and just worry about your
games! It's very easy to write short little shell scripts to
automatically load the layout you need when you start up a
game. For instance, if you wanted to run the game xgalaga++,
using QJoyPad for joystick support, you could create a text
file called run-xgalaga with the following lines in it:
#!/bin/sh
qjoypad "XGalaga" &
xgalaga++
Then with the command "chmod a+x run-xgalaga" you could make
that text file an executable shell script; once that's done,
all you need to to do is execute run-xgalaga and QJoyPad will
load the appropriate layout and your game will start. To use
this script for any other program, just change "XGalaga" to a
different layout name and "xgalaga++" to the name of some
other program and you're done.
_________________________________________________________
Chapter 4. Layout Files
When QJoyPad saves a layout, it creates a file using that
layout's name. Because of this, layout names must also be
valid filenames. This shouldn't be very limiting, it just
means that names can't contain certain special characters such
as '/', '*', etc. Remember that most Linux file systems are
case sensitive, so a layout named "Layout" will be considered
distinct from a layout named "layout". On most modern file
systems, spaces should be okay and there should be no serious
limits on name length.
Whenever you create a new layout, QJoyPad makes a new file
called Name.lyt in ~/.qjoypad3, where Name is the name that
you provided. Whenever you update that layout, it overwrites
that file to reflect your changes, whenever you revert, it
rereads that file, and if you ever remove that layout, it will
erase that file from your hard drive.
The format of these files isn't difficult to figure out, so
you can edit them by hand if you like. The numbers used to
represent keys are standard X11 keycodes.
It's also easy to share QJoyPad layout files; just copy them
from one user's ~/.qjoypad3 directory to another and either
tell QJoyPad to update the layout list by right clicking on
the tray icon, or just restart QJoyPad. If you switch layouts
through the command line, you don't even need to do that.
_________________________________________________________
Chapter 5. Problems
5.1. I can't get my game controller to work in Linux; will QJoyPad
help?
Well, that depends on why you can't get it to work. For the
most part, the answer is "No." QJoyPad can only use joysticks
and gamepads that are recognized by your kernel and that have
the proper drivers loaded. If you can't get your joysticks to
work at all in Linux, then, no, QJoyPad can't help. (you might
want to check out the joystick.txt file included with your
kernel source; if you don't know anything about working with
the kernel, check out the Linux Kernel HOWTO
[http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Kernel-HOWTO.html] )
If your joystick is detected and somewhat working, but you
can't get it to work in specific programs, then QJoyPad just
might be what you're looking for. One of the main reasons I
wrote QJoyPad was because my gamepads simply wouldn't work
right with the input plugins for Linux Playstation emulators,
so I know for a fact that sometimes QJoyPad can work around
specific software issues.
Check out Section 5.2 for some tips for checking if your
joystick is working.
_________________________________________________________
5.2. Joystick recognition
5.2.1. QJoyPad says it can't find any joysticks?
5.2.2. QJoyPad isn't showing all of my joysticks.
5.2.3. My joystick has more/fewer buttons/axes than that!
QJoyPad automatically recognizes your joysticks using the
Linux joystick driver, so all joysticks must be working
properly in Linux before they can be used in QJoyPad. If you
can't see all of your joysticks or if QJoyPad complains it
can't find any, chances are your joystick(s) are not plugged
in or are not properly detected by Linux. If that's not it,
QJoyPad could also be looking for your joysticks in the wrong
directory.
First, double check that your joysticks are plugged in. If
they aren't, plug them, load any modules you might need, and
tell QJoyPad to Update joystick devices with the popup menu
(remember, this menu is only accessible when the Setup Dialog
is closed).
If you're still having trouble, QJoyPad might have been
compiled with the devdir setting pointing to the wrong place.
That option had to be set at compile time, and to change it
you must recompile (see Section 2.2); however, if you don't
want to bother with that, you can specify the location of your
devices as an argument. Using the command "qjoypad --device
/dev/input", for example, will start QJoyPad and tell it to
look for joysticks in /dev/input/js0, /dev/input/js1, etc.
If that doesn't work, then you might want to make sure your
joysticks are working properly. One way to test this is to do
a "cat /dev/input/js0" (or wherever your joystick device is)
and press a few buttons on the controller. If you get a bunch
of crazy characters, it's working. If not, you'll have to
fiddle around with kernel drivers, and should probably look
elsewhere for guidance.
If for some reason QJoyPad is reporting the wrong number of
buttons or axes for your device, that means the Linux joystick
driver is also reporting the wrong number. Unless you can't
get to buttons or axes that you need, this shouldn't be a
problem, but if you want to get the number right, Try using a
different driver or check out the documentation for the one
you're using.
If your joysticks are working, plugged in, and my program is
looking in the right place, then I'm not sure what to tell
you. Unfortunately, I don't have a wealth of different devices
and software setups to test on. If you're really stuck, drop
me a line and I'll see what I can do.
<wren42@users.sourceforge.net>
_________________________________________________________
5.3. Joystick adjustment
5.3.1. Why does it say I'm moving if I'm not?
5.3.2. I keep going in two directions at once instead of just one!
5.3.3. I'm pushing up, but nothing's happening!
Chances are, this means you're using an overly sensitive or
poorly calibrated joystick or your sensitivity settings are
all wrong. Try adjusting the Dead Zone of the axes that are
giving you trouble (move the blue tab in the Axis Edit
dialog), more away from the center if it thinks you're
pressing a button when you aren't, more toward the center if
it thinks you aren't pressing a button when you are. If that
doesn't work, try manually adjusting your joystick (if it has
adjustment knobs/sliders), or try calibrating it with jscal.
_________________________________________________________
5.4. QJoyPad won't start!
There are two reasons why QJoyPad won't start. For one,
QJoyPad won't start is if it's already running! To make sure
QJoyPad doesn't interfere with itself, only one version of
QJoyPad is allowed to run at a time. If you can't see an
already open version, look for the icon in the system tray. If
you really can't find it anywhere, try running "killall
qjoypad" and then "rm -f ~/lock.pid" and then try starting
QJoyPad again. It should work this time.
Finally, QJoyPad won't actually run if one of its arguments is
--h or --help. When it sees one of those arguments, it outputs
usage information to the console and then quits. If you're
running QJoyPad away from a console or want it to run like
normal, don't give one of these arguments.
_________________________________________________________
5.5. I have two versions of QJoyPad open at once and they're getting
in each other's way!
QJoyPad doesn't work well when there are two or more instances
open; for that reason, it uses a file to tell whether or not
it's already running. Every version of QJoyPad has done this,
but in version 3.4, where that file is kept was changed to
make the program more compatible with certain distributions.
If you're seeing two versions of QJoyPad open at once, that
means that either one of those is QJoyPad 3.4 and the other is
an older version, or that you're running an older version of
QJoyPad on a system where you don't have write access to
/var/run. In either case, you should just make sure that you
are running the newest version of QJoyPad and that there are
no other versions installed on your system.
If you really want to keep earlier versions of QJoyPad, that's
fine! Just remember that if you do, it's possible to have two
instancesrunning at once and that that can cause problems.
_________________________________________________________
5.6. I'm getting strange errors when I change layouts; what's wrong?
Those errors show that there is something wrong with the
layout files themselves. This means the files were corrupted,
edited incorrectly, or for some reason QJoyPad didn't save
them right (shouldn't ever happen, never seen it happen, but
nothing's impossible). Unless the file QJoyPad is looking for
is completely missing or mangled, it's quite likely that the
file can be repaired by hand. If you need help with the save
format, just send me an email <wren42@users.sourceforge.net>
and I'll see if I can't help.
If worse comes to worst and you lose a layout file you
created, it shouldn't take you too long to rebuild it from
scratch.
_________________________________________________________
5.7. This program only works in XWindows?
Yep, I'm afraid so. For all of you out there with old Linux
console games that won't run in an xterm, you'll have to try
something else. If you really must find a way, joy2key is a
program that is similar to QJoyPad but without a graphical
interface or many of the fancier features, but which doesn't
have that limitation. Check it out at:
http://interreality.org/~tetron/technology/joy2key.
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5.8. But my window manager doesn't HAVE a system tray!
I'm well aware that every Linux setup is different and that
there are a million different window managers that range from
beautiful, feature-full, and bloated to stark, minimalist, and
lightning-fast. Unfortunately, after a few people suggested
that I have a tray icon for the no-gui mode, I realized that
it was a very, very good idea. The new version of QJoyPad is
built up around the system tray conceptually, and to make a
version that doesn't use it would be a lot of work, so for now
I plan to keep things as they are.
However, to accommodate those of you who don't have a system
tray and can't stand that little icon, using the argument
--notray makes a floating icon that is much bigger instead of
the little tray icon. It still behaves exactly as the smaller
icon would, except it is larger and cannot be captured by the
system tray.
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5.9. I hate the QJoyPad icon. Is there any way to change it?
Absolutely! Starting with version 3.3, QJoyPad stores its
icons in $PATH/share/pixmaps/qjoypad (where $PATH is the
install path used by given at install time, /usr/local by
default) and actually comes with a few different icons to
choose from. In that directory, there are two files,
icon24.png and icon64.png which correspond to the small and
large icons that qjoypad will use. These files are just links,
and can be relinked to any png image of the appropriate size.
Feel free to switch between the provided icons, change them,
or make your own! QJoyPad should look how you want it to.
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5.10. Why do I have to tell QJoyPad to "update joystick devices"?
Why can't it do that on its own?
It can! With the hotplug options of the more recent Linux
kernels, not only is it easy to automatically load the right
modules for a joystick when it is plugged in, but also to
notify QJoyPad and have it update its list. Unfortunately,
this is a little complex, still not available on everyone's
computer, and still in development. If you'd like to get this
setup, I'd love to help you figure things out and perhaps I'll
make it a standard feature of QJoyPad once I have a better
idea of what needs to be done on various systems. Please,
either contact me for help getting started, or send me an
email after you get it working explaining how you did it ;) To
make QJoyPad search for new devices, use the command qjoypad
--update.
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5.11. When QJoyPad checks for new joysticks, it doesn't find mine!
When you plug in a joystick, there are certain things that
have to happen for the joystick to become available to
programs like QJoyPad. Mainly, the joystick has to be
recognized and drivers have to be loaded. Even if this process
is automatic on your computer it could take a few seconds, so
if QJoyPad can't find your device right away, try again a few
moments later. If driver modules aren't loaded automatically,
don't forget to load them before you ask QJoyPad to look for
new devices. If you keep having troubles, see Section 5.2.
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5.12. Why are both Up and Down treated as the same axis?
That's because they are the same axis. An "axis" on a joystick
(or gamepad) isn't actually a direction, but a dimension. A
standard simple joystick can move along two axes, the X-axis
(side to side) and the Y-axis (up and down); when you move the
stick to the left, you're moving it along the X-axis in the
negative direction, and when you move it to the right you're
moving it in the positive direction along the same axis.
What really matters is that in QJoyPad, every axis represents
two opposing directions and can therefore have two different
keys. I only do it that way because thats how the device
itself works. I'd make the labels a little more intuitive, but
unfortunately what each axis corresponds to changes from
controller to controller and there's no way for me to know
which is which. If you don't know which axis to set for which
direction, move in the direction you want and see which button
lights up, or try using Quick Set instead.
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5.13. All of this is too complicated. Why isn't there a button for
Up?
Unfortunately, adding new features means increasing complexity
and making things more confusing. That's just how things go.
If you just want to have one key pressed when you press a
button on your joystick, try using just the quick set feature
of QJoyPad 3. There all you need to do is press what you want
to press on the joystick and then type the key you want that
button to trigger.
Also, if you preferred the simplicity of QJoyPad 2.1, it's
still available and quite functional, it just doesn't have
quite as many options and doesn't use a system tray icon. The
two versions of QJoyPad are compatible and can both be run on
the same computer without getting in each others' way (as long
as you rename one of them so they aren't both called
"qjoypad"), just not at the same time.
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5.14. Features and suggestions
5.14.1. Why can't I click with an axis, or move the mouse with a
_________________________________________________________
5.14.2. Why doesn't QJoyPad do _____?
For the sake of my sanity, I didn't program every possible
thing I could imagine someone wanting to do into QJoyPad. I
added in the features that people were asking for and which
made sense, and I set somewhat arbitrary limits on what the
user can and can't do. Why set limits? Because if I didn't the
program would get far too bulky and too time consuming to
write. I tried to draw the line at what I thought was
reasonable use. No, you can't make the mouse click whenever
you move an axis... but why would you want to?
If there's something that you feel QJoyPad should be able to
do that it can't, let me know and I'll considering adding that
in future versions.
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Chapter 6. Credits
Thank you to Erich Kitzml<6D>ller, author of xjoypad for the
inspiration to write QJoyPad and for the code that started me
off.
The development team for Psi, the Jabber client, also get a
lot of thanks for writing the tray icon code that I borrowed
and tweaked. Thank you for developing GPL and for helping
other developers! (Check out the Psi Website
[http://psi.affinix.com/])
Thank you also to everyone who has sent me an email about
QJoyPad. Knowing that my program is used and appreciated means
a lot, especially since that's about all I get out of my
programming. Open source is like teaching; it's very important
and means a lot for young and developing programmers, but it's
a time consuming and underpaid profession ;)
Finally, I need to offer a very warm thank you to Mark
Hannessen who graciously donated one Logitech Wingman
Rumblepad to the cause of QJoyPad. Without that, I simply
would not have been able to add support for multiple axes or
throttle controls, so version 3 might have never been made.
Thank you for your interest and for your support, Mark.
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Chapter 7. This software is GPL!
Check out LICENSE.txt or http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
for details! The bare bones of it is, this program is
distributed in open-source form so that others may share it
freely, learn from it, or modify it as they see fit. However,
under no circumstances can it be sold!
This code was written entirely by Nathan Gaylinn (excepting
the code used for displaying a tray icon that is adapted from
the Psi source [http://psi.affinix.com/]) but is based on the
idea of xjoypad by Erich Kitzm<7A>ller.
Yay for the power GPL gives to developers!