Robot Position Record and Playback

I have many questions.  ANy feedback would be appricated.

1) I see Linux CNC mills equipped with jog wheel pendents or and similar interfaces. Is there a relatively simple game-pad interface to move a machine, in my case it will be a 5-DOF 3D printed robot.

2) Then, I understand there is a way to record positions for future playback. Is there an implementation I could reference?  Any links?  If I can get that far I could write interpreter code to translate between G-code and a pseudo robot language/syntax.

3) Currently I have the Axis GUI running with VisMach in sim mode.  Is there a better UI interface to use for a project like this?

4) Has any of this been done before that I can reference? My Google-fu is letting me down.

forum.linuxcnc.org/21-axis/30986-axis-po...ger?start=100#296115

probably this

I did stumble across that utility. It only seems to only record XYZ. I'll need the abc also. And the Teach-In function doesn't seem to include abc.

"line format: line-no X Y Z flood mist lube spindle"

I'll have to look more closely at the logger, maybe it is pulling position data with some other method.

Well I found my own answer on the gamepad.

joypad with halui and hal_input

Actually looks not too difficult.