Openmoko on Design

[Ken Restivo]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:28:13AM +0800, Marek Lindner wrote:
> On Wednesday, 30. July 2008 10:18:33 Al Johnson wrote:
> > I agree with everything you say here. The keyboard should just appear when
> > I want it and disappear when I don't. The absence of a manual override
> > means that whenever it gets it wrong I can't correct it, the worst case
> > being when I need to enter something but the keyboard doesn't appear.
> > Conversely the presence of a manual override causes no problem even if it
> > is never needed.
> >
> > The keyboard failing to appear is not a hypothetical scenario. Without
> > manual intervention minimo was unusable because the keyboard didn't appear
> > when the cursor was placed for URL entry. This is likely to be an issue
> > with other apps that don't have a specific openmoko port, and we shouldn't
> > have to create such a port just to use an otherwise capable app on
> > openmoko. Other issues include the keyboard appearing when an edit field
> > has focus although I don't want to edit it, keyboard appearing and
> > disappearing frequently if a form contains mixed input types, or appearing
> > over the top of the field to be edited. The field having focus although
> > editing is not required is probably impossible to detect because the answer
> > depends on the opinion of the user at the time.
> 
> I understand your points and they all are valid. How do we address them ? That 
> brings us back to Seans mail. Openmoko will provide the minimum set of 
> applications and basic functionality that empowers ordinary users to use the 
> phone. We will make sure that these applications work well with the 
> environment we provide. This is an ongoing process we just started compared 
> to many established phone systems. 
> Feel invited to extend that basic system through packages that can be 
> installed. If you install an application that hasn't been ported to the 
> Openmoko platform and does not support the keyboard you also should install 
> the manual keyboard button or you just install a package which deativates the 
> automatic keyboard behaviour right away if you don't like it.
> We have to realize that the world is very diverse - we wont find a solution 
> which suits for everybody in all the cases. So, we have to make it flexible. 
> Again: This is a process and you can help us with that.
> 
> 


I feel terrible about this whole mess because I was one of the first people in the original terminal thread, and I filed one of the original bug reports on it too.

I don't expect to be able to stop the mailing-list train wreck from continuing, now that it has developed a momentum of its own, except to apologize for having been involved in starting it in the first place. Sorry about that.

-ken