[RFC 0/11] Linux FF: Intro

[Elias Vanderstuyft]

Hi,


This is the sequel of the mail with title: "Discussion and Improvement
of Wine's Linux Force Feedback implementation".
This mail is meant to give an introduction to the next 11 mails:


All tests were performed using wine-1.7.11-206-g82b3813
(but none of the files of which I propose changes to be made in,
 are affected in the current (2014-03-04) wine-version 1.7.13)

Because I haven't created any (formal) patch yet (and instead first
request for comments),
I tried to keep the line numbers to reference the affected files
more or less based to the version I started from, where I could.
However, the orig code of a (informal) patch that has to be applied
after (and thus is dependent of) a previous patch,
may be different from the initial code of the wine-version I started from.

After having discussed everything, I will send a proper patchset.

In these mails, sometimes 'FEdit' is mentioned:
it's a MS application that allows to create all FF effect types
(except CustomForce and rumble/vibration effects),
and therefore the ideal test application.
Physical behavior is compared between Windows7 (using Logitech MOMO
wheel with latest drivers installed) running in Virtualbox,
and my patched Wine-version.
In the end, (using a dummy FF driver on the Linux side, thanks to Michal Malý),
the behavior of Wine is almost (limitations caused by the dummy ff
driver, such as updating an effect while playing is not implemented)
identical,
if not better (in some aspects) then the Windows equivalent.

Sometimes I refer to linux-input mailing lists to prove a statement,
because the links may vanish (unlikely though),
I provide the titles corresponding with the links:
    (http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-input@vger.kernel.org/msg08513.html):
        "ff-core effect id handling in case of a failed effect upload"
    (http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-input@vger.kernel.org/msg08459.html):
        "Questions about the documentation/specification of Linux
ForceFeedback input.h"


Subjects [11]
-------------
- Joystick control panel program [2]
- Linux effect status management [3]
- Linux effect parameter: start delay [1]
- Linux effect parameter: periodic effect's phase [1]
- Linux effect parameters: time parameters [3]
- Linux effect: conditional effect's parameters [2]
- Linux effect: axes [1]
- Linux effect direction [7]
- Linux effect parameters (global) [6]
- Linux joystick initialization [1]
- Debug message fixes/additions [6]


Elias