WHY WONT dance pads work automatically??

ill start by saying thanks for all you have done and please dont take this negativly...
ok this is STILL after all these years the biggest issue with your software...first is that even when windows detects the dance pad and the game can detect the input it still doesnt work.. apparantly cuz the input isnt MAPPED or something, but WHY cant it automap the dance pad?
2nd its not strikingly obvious as to WHERE to go to try to MAP your dance pad, this should be the FIRST TOP MOST GLITTERING APPARANT OPTION because its probably the most important thing you can do, if it cant AUTOMAP the dance pad!

next thing is in options i found some option where i can select automap input which says "recomended" and i can also turn that off, but why does it even let y ou turn that off if TURNING THAT OFF WILL MAKE IT SO THEKEYBOARD STOPS WORKING?!??! its foolish to allow that, it might as well say "select this to ruin the game and force you to reinstall it" , since reinstalling seems to be the only obvious fix. Now i know theres some lame warning about how you need to have the keys mapped before you deselect this, note item above about how its difficult to FIND where to map keys (i still havnt found it but i havnt spend more than 5 minutes looking for it yet, im about to try again.)

please dont take any of this negativly im just trying to give some important feedback and suggestions to improve things but if they dont get changed its ok because reinstalling the program really isnt THAT hard afterall...
thanks again for all youve done making this awesome program.
now all we need is a mainstream network tv show that prominantly features this game like a game show with contestants playing it for perfect attacks to try to win cash and fabulous prizes! somebody notify pat sajak!

im replying to my own post because i assumed uninstall and reinstalling the program would fix the broken keyboard issue, BUT IT DIDNT!
now what, the keyboard does nothing now especially the arrow keys, now how do i fix this and why in the world would reinstalling the program not fix this problem that i have just because i momentarily deselected "automap" or whatever its called (i cant get in there to confirm what its called since the keyboard wont work with the game anymore)! now the frustration level has gone way up....:)

How many different dance pads are there in the world???

Each dance pad will register as a different device with different inputs. You cannot automap dance pads unless you chose ONE.

For instance "The Crypt of the Necrodancer" works with any dance pad, but they actually designed their software to automap to ours because they loved our products. But with ANY OTHER dance pad you buy you will have to manually re-map. StepMania has no official dance pad and never has. The way StepMania is today, there are MANY options and you need to take time to get familiar with several of them.

if you're keymaps are screwed try deleting keymaps.ini instead of reinstalling

My pad i just got works halfway through the song then says playstation 3 controller connected then avlag then fail. Its an energy arcade metal pad.

It's probably malfunctioning, in which case there isn't really anything StepMania can do about it.