From: Jean-Louis Biasini <jlbiasini_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:16:34 +0100

Hi,
Thanks for the comment

    We've more or less tried using pluginlib actions to have generalized
    keymaps. The problem is, it simply doesn't really work. Since the
    directional keys can be quite different from target to target (on
    wheel targets up and down are going to be wheel up and down, whereas
    on joystick targets it will be movements of the stick, and sometimes
    both can work and sometimes each will need to be handled
    individually).


It depend clearly on device and plugins but on some device this could be
implemented or at least we could have some of the button linked to PLA

    Generally speaking, the reason they don't all use actions is because
    it turns out that in reality you still need to look at every plugin to
    make sure its keymap works, unless it's a very simply controlled
    plugin (which are the ones we typically already have using actions).


This is plainly right but this would mean to do it only once. Without it
you have to do it for every single new target. So I could take the time
to do it (I have to for the fuze+ anyway so I would like to maximize the
effect of the work.
As I do not own all the device the principal would be too implement it
all the time that it is possible without changing actual keymaps

    This is one of those cases where the idea has been tried in the past,
    didn't work out as well as expected, and we moved on from it to what
    we have now. Going back to it would be a regression without a strong
    plan to resolve the issues that have already been seen.

Actually some plugins do already use that library, and some more could
probably do also (at least partialy, but as I wrote in my first post
about it, every single key mapped into it save a lot of time)

    This is a good idea in theory. But pluginlib-action (short: PLA) has one
    problem, it offers only few actions. This is quite on purpose though,
    this way it can cover all targets without lots of complexity.
    If you look at PLA history, it used to be a lot more complex. But that
    wasn't practical and thus trimmed down.


Yeah this is what I understood while doing looking into it I'll check
history to look at the different problem and see If I can come up with a
solution

    Anyway, the few actions make the number of plugins it can possibly be
    useful for limited. There are still some, like lamp, stats, rockblox or
    superdom (possibly more). So yea, patches are welcome!

    But not all plugins can use PLA. And we should not try to make PLA more
    complex again so it can fit them. It didn't work in the past.


What about those for which a few commond could be passed? is it a
problem if we pass quit action or direction key through PLA and let
other button being set indivualy? This would also simplify a lot the
manual...

Best Regards,

Jean-Louis Biasini
Received on 2012-01-05