[PD] [hid] users poll

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2005, at 7:18 PM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
>> however if I have a row of 7 distance sensors, such as what is being used 
>> by 13 artists at Vidéographe this month, [gate 7] or [shunt 7] is more 
>> straightforward than [route in1 in2 in3 in4 in5 in6 in7]. (The sensor box 
>> most likely wouldn't have any meaningful labels at all for those axes; is 
>> it possible that they wouldn't have labels at all? what happens in this 
>> case?)
> If you are using HID, then you are talking about Human Interface 
> Devices, which can be broken down into buttons and axes.

Cool! I am also talking about buttons and axes. I guess I'm on the right 
track.

> If you are building your own, then I highly recommend that you map 
> sensors which provide continuous data to axis types and on/off sensors 
> to button/key types.

Right. Having them wired the other way around would be quite 
counterproductive.

>  "in4" is not a very meaningful label, HID implementations generally use 
> more descriptive names like "abs_x", "rel_rz".

What's the link between these labels and what you have just said about 
humans and axes and buttons? It has something to do with "I am not a 
number! I am a free man!", yes? Humans don't like to be treated like 
numbers, so if [hid] is to interface with a Human, it has to be through a 
label. It's diplomacy and it's symbolism.

> I don't have my multI/O running yet,

Is it sufficient that it respect the USB-HID protocol for it to qualify 
as Human Interface, or does it have to name axes?

> so I haven't tested a "Multi-Axis Controller" with [hid] yet, that might 
> change my perspective.

That's another thing I wonder about. How many axes does it take before 
something becomes "Multi-Axis" ?

> As for the [gate 7] option, you could just [route abs_x abs_y abs_z] to [gate 
> 3] for example.

I don't understand. I'm not talking about abs_x abs_y abs_z, I'm talking 
about a row of seven distance sensors parallel to each other. Should I 
name them abs_z1 abs_z2 abs_z3 abs_z4 abs_z5 abs_z6 abs_z7 ?

> I've never heard of [shunt]

It's just the same as [demux] or [gate], really, but it's compatible with 
jMax's [demux].

>> If I have really a lot of sensors, I could instead use [for 0 64 1] -> 
>> [sprintf in%d] -> [listfind], or I could use [atof] (that I posted a few 
>> days ago).
> This is really not HID stuff.  The vast majority of HIDs have 4 or less axes 
> and 8 or less buttons.

Ok, so human interfaces that are made with axes are not human if they have 
too many axes?

> Sounds to me that you like you work in your own specific ways: [listfind], 
> [atof], [shunt] for example.  I am gearing [hid] to normal Pd use.

Wow. It's not about liking to work in my own specific ways. It's about 
finding ways to circumvent [hid]'s symbol restriction so that I don't need 
to copypaste. If I don't have access to abnormal Pd use (that is, 
GridFlow), then I just have to do [route abs_z1 abs_z2 abs_z3 abs_z4 
abs_z5 abs_z6 abs_z7 abs_z8 abs_z9 abs_z10 abs_z11 abs_z12 abs_z13 abs_z14 
abs_z15 abs_z16 abs_z17 abs_z18 abs_z19 abs_z20 abs_z21 abs_z22 abs_z23 
abs_z24 abs_z25 abs_z26 abs_z27 abs_z28 abs_z29 abs_z30 abs_z31 abs_z32 
abs_z33 abs_z34 abs_z35 abs_z36 abs_z37 abs_z38 abs_z39 abs_z40 abs_z41 
abs_z42 abs_z43 abs_z44 abs_z45 abs_z46 abs_z47 abs_z48 abs_z49 abs_z50 
abs_z51 abs_z52 abs_z53 abs_z54 abs_z55 abs_z56 abs_z57 abs_z58 abs_z59 
abs_z60 abs_z61 abs_z62 abs_z63]. That's more like a normal human Pd 
patch.

> What is [listfind] and [atof] anyway?

[listfind] is an external I wrote sometime ago to find the index of a 
symbol in a list. [atof] is an external I wrote the other day to pick up 
the first float-looking portion of a symbol and turn it to a float; I 
posted the source code of the latter on pd-list recently. Do you know any 
objects that already achieve that?

> You can do everything that you need to using Miller's Pd and the [hid] 
> object.

Sounds like Steve's Music Store's Slogan: If we don't have it, you don't 
need it!

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