[Newbies] steam controller and Etoys

[Vicki S]

Hi. I tried signing up for the Squeakland mailing list but I'm not sure 
that worked. I was fiddling around with Etoys yesterday and remembered 
getting an Xbox 360 controller working with the joystick morph in 
Windows. So I tried out my Steam controller from Valve. I couldn't 
connect it to the morph but Windows 10 views it as a usb keyboard/mouse 
and it worked fine with the Etoys To Go app even without Steam running. 
Both the toggle and the left touch pad send arrow key input that the key 
press morph can capture. I am not sure if the controller functions in 
Windows without Steam installed but I wasn't up for the kerfuffle 
uninstalling Steam would cause just to find out. Unfortunately Steam 
isn't the kind of application young children should have installed but I 
thought it was cool that there's another input device out there that 
works well with Etoys. I tried out Ubuntu too but I haven't used the 
controller in Ubuntu for a while and I guess an update overwrote a 
configuration file because the wireless dongle wouldn't work. Plugging 
the controller in with a micro usb cord worked without Steam running but 
strangely lsusb still didn't detect it and I couldn't connect it to the 
joystick morph. Mouse and keyboard input was fine however. There may be 
an open source standalone Linux driver available but again I don't know 
if that is necessary. Of course to customize controller output 
applications must be launched from Steam. That works for Etoys as well.

I am a hobbyist/enthusiast with an interest in educational software. 
Squeak has become my favourite environment for prototyping and 
experimenting and I much prefer Etoys to Scratch. Some of the issues I 
have with Etoys have been already been expressed by others so I am 
curious if any new versions are in the pipeline.

Thanks

Vicki