HID collections overview

A HID collection is a meaningful grouping of HID controls and their respective HID usages.

Controls should be grouped together if they're logically related or are functionally dependent on one another. For instance, a SHIFT key and a letter key on a keyboard shouldn't belong to separate collections. Collections can have nested subcollections, also referred to as link collections. Report descriptors define one or more top-level collections, and the report items, associated with each collection, define one or more HID reports.

Windows extends the concept of a HID collection to include:

• Top-level collections
• Top-level collections opened by Windows for system use
• Preparsed data
• Link collections
• Collection capability
• Button capability arrays
• Value capability arrays
• Data indices