Well on the plus side it's nice that they've FINALLY updated their constants. On the negative we've already did various "hacks" in the controls.dat to work around these guys.
There really isn't any way to do these via a converter because in controls.dat if we saw there was a "half 4 way" as mame is putting it. We would define it as a 4-way and then leave the 4th label blank and add a note about it in misc details.
Also the problem I see with these new constants in mame is that they are STILL not specific enough. Half 3 way is almost undoubtedly a tetris or a tetris clone and what it means is that the "up" control on the joystick isn't hooked up. Half 8 way on the other hand, well I've seen that used in tank games, meaning one "half8" is facing left and the other facing right and also the way you'd expect, with the down lever unhooked.
Joy 1 way is just a lever, which is the same as a switch essentially. Tapper comes to mind.
I've never seen a triple joy game. How the hell would you control it with only two hands?
Are these changes recent, because my guess is at least a few of them are going to be redacted.