Just wondering how many of you use HID Manager directly, and what you think of the API and/or documentation.

I have only looked at HID Manager, from what I have seen it seems useless to me because I don’t really car about joysticks and stuff.

I don't mind the COM-esque API, that's easily understandable once you've caught onto the style. What bugs me is the inconsistency of the devices themselves. You never know what a particular kind of input will actually show up as, or what kinds of values it'll return.

I think the HID Manager has gotten a bum rap. It's far from the easiest API out there, but it's no CoreAudio. Well, I suppose it is if you don't get HID Utilities. With that you can easily get gamepads working in about a day or less.

I second the HID Manager through HID Utilities as well. I managed to implement gamepads in a day, with spare time for InputSprocket.

???

How come ive never heard of it, is it for controllers and steering wheels and stuff?

Jammin' Racer uses it.

unknown Wrote:???

How come ive never heard of it, is it for controllers and steering wheels and stuff?

That's exactly what it's for. It also handles other input devices like mice, keyboards, and barcode scanners. Here are the docs for it:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation...ptual/HID/

OneSadCookie Wrote:You never know what a particular kind of input will actually show up as, or what kinds of values it'll return.

That's the core problem. Using the HID manager is not especially difficult but the need to more or less custom handle every device out there is a pain and leads to lots of support emails.

KenD

OneSadCookie Wrote:What bugs me is the inconsistency of the devices themselves. You never know what a particular kind of input will actually show up as, or what kinds of values it'll return.

A good example of this is hatswitches. On my MadCatz controller, the hatswitch values are laid out like so:

8 1 2
7 0 3
6 5 4

However, my Logitech Rumblepad 2 lays them out like this (which is counter-intuitive IMO):

7 0 1
6 8 2
5 4 3

Quote:What bugs me is the inconsistency of the devices themselves. You never know what a particular kind of input will actually show up as, or what kinds of values it'll return.

None of which is Apple's fault BTW.

Apple has provided feedback to device manufacturer's for years - and they hardly implemented any of it. Hardware vendors don't even attempt to fix any bugs in existing products. They might fix it in the next version of the device if they're in a good mood. Of course that doesn't help all the people that own the current version of the device.

Now, with that said, some good proposals have been presented to Apple over the years for building a system to take all the inconsistent inputs and map them into a consistent format before the application gets the input. Apple was receptive to the idea and it was apparently close to release. However, it has never seen the light of day, likely for a variety of reasons - some of which are valid technical concerns.

With all this said, HID Utilities works pretty well and once you figure out the most popular device exceptions, it's not too bad.

Wade