Joymaster

Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

I’ve put v0.1, a preview release, of Joymaster online.

Joymaster lets you control (X) windows using your joystick. Other programs like this already exist, but Joymaster takes a different approach.

First of all, it watches the currently focussed window to see which buttons should perform what actions. This means you can have joystick controls perform different events per window. Secondly, it supports macro’s both on the joystick and for controlling windows. For instance, tapping the ‘Up’ button on your joystick three times can result in an event sequence on a window that loads, changes and saves your document and then exits the application.

I am personally using it to load and save games under various emulators as well as quiting emulators and then controlling a running Midnight Commander to select a different game to play. I also use it to lauch, watch and pause movies using Totem. As you can tell, I’m quite the couch-potato.