I tried remapping joystick axis to buttons in Wing Commander 1 and stumbled in a limitation.

In Wing Commander 1, throttle is done by pressing joystick 1 button 2 and using the joystick 1 Y axis. Roll is done by pressing joystick 1 button 2 and using the joystick 1 X axis.
If you have a 4 axis controller, you could think about remapping throttle by using real joystick 1 axis 4 (HOTAS throttle) being remapped to emulated axis 2 (axis Y), plus the same real joystick 1 axis 4 also remapped to emulated button 2.

Sadly, it doesn't work. Because when you use the real joystick axis 4, emulated button 2 is only triggered when you push the axis half-way up or down.
The problem is the game recognizing the Y axis without button 2 pressed as pitch. So, the first half of the axis behaves as pitch and the second half behaves as throttle. The sames goes for remapping roll. The first half behaves as yaw and the second half behaves as roll.

You can workaround by remapping real joystick axis 4 to keys + and -, but then the throttle becomes digital and you lose the analog signal. The same goes for roll, remapping a joystick axis to keys , and .
Another workaround is remapping real axis 4 to emulated axis 2. Then you really press button 2 instead of remapping it. This way the analog throttle works, although you need to press an additional button in a 4 axis controller.

Being able to configure a dead zone threshold where an axis to button mapping is triggered would fix it and be a great improvement to DOSBox keymapper.