I have an USB gamepad (a Colour Rumble Pad), and HAL fails to detect it as input.joystick.

[fab@dhcppc1 ~]$ cat /sys/class/input/input3/name
Jess Tech Colour Rumble Pad
[fab@dhcppc1 ~]$ cat /sys/class/input/input3/capabilities/abs 
30027

which means that ABS_X, ABS_Y and ABS_Z are set.

Strong suspects are on these lines of hald/linux/device.c


 269         /* TODO: Hmm; this code looks sketchy... why do we do !test_bit on the Y axis ?? */
 270         if (test_bit(ABS_X, bitmask) && !test_bit(ABS_Y, bitmask)) {
 271                 long bitmask_touch[NBITS(KEY_MAX)];
 272 
 273                 hal_device_add_capability (d, "input.joystick");

It is as if HAL does not detect as joystick something with ABS_Y...