My experience with the Freerunner

[Matt Mets]

Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:
> On Wed, 28 May 2008 19:14:46 -0400 Matt Mets <matt.mets at cibomahto.com> babbled:
>
>   
>>> Matt Mets wrote:
>>>       
>>>>  I tried out the ASU software update on my GTA01 tonight, and took a 
>>>>  short video of it:
>>>>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ISHrtuQuGM
>>>>         
>>> Cool video!
>>>       
>> Thanks!
>>
>>     
>>>>  The keyboard seems quite nice, and worked well with a stylus (better 
>>>>  than the video might suggest, I was working around the camera).
>>>>         
>>> What about the finger usability?
>>> AFAIK the Qtopia predictive keyboard has been projected also to help in 
>>> finger usability...
>>>       
>> I wasn't able to use the keyboard with my finger.  Once a letter is pressed,
>> you can't slide to a neighboring letter to change it, so it was difficult to
>> correct mistakes.  There was a different keyboard on the original Qtopia
>> builds that had a magnifying-key feature that seemed to make this easier.  It
>> is entirely possible that I missed something here though.  I do like the
>> gesture support (slide left to backspace, forward to insert space, down for
>> enter, up to switch keyboards), but I would like to see something that
>> indicates that gestures are being performed (perhaps a line that shows a
>> trail of where your finger has been?).
>>     
>
> to correct - just backspace! :) (left slide). the magnifying thing is possible
> - but somehow i saw it as superfluous as chances are u press and release very
> fast like a keypress on a normal keyboard and then notice the mistake. even so
> - the dictionary lookup will be correcting if it's in the dictionary and not
> too far of a typo (press too far away from intended key). admittedly the
> dictionary we ship has only 5000 words - but hey. it's a simple text file. :)
>   
Ok, keeping that in mind, pressing in the general area and using the 
word lookup feature seems to work pretty well with a finger.  At least i 
have been able to put in some simple phrases quite easily.

>> The predictive keyboard bit might help but I haven't become proficient with
>> it yet.  It seemed weird that it shows two lists of possible words (one
>> horizontal across the top of the keyboard, one in a dropdown box).
>>     
>
> horizontal is for quick selecting the most likely matches for correction (or if
> no matches - exactly what you typed), and if it doesn't fit u can access ALL
> matches from the popup list.
>   
One other thing I noticed was that the widget for the popup window 
covers up the leftmost horizontal match or two, making it impossible to 
select them.
>> Also, when running a regular X application (remote xterm), it seemed like I
>> had to press enter (or tab) to get the characters to be sent to the app,
>> which made it very difficult to enter things into the terminal.  But
>> usability in actual phone-apps is probably more important :-D.  Perhaps a
>> direct-input mode is/could be implemented for that sort of application.
>>     
>
> it's possible we can do this - in svn there is even a full qwerty kbd layout i
> initially used - with ctrl, alt, etc. for terminal junkies, BUT for now
> correction is always-on.
>   
Here is a funny idea: how about replacing the word lookup with 
bash-style command completion when in the terminal?  That could be 
really cool!  Maybe the word lookup feature already has an interface 
that can be hooked into. I could see it being useful for auto-completing 
really any application-specific data as well. :-D  For example, maybe in 
the dialer program to show your closest contacts that match the number 
(one of my favorite features of the GTK-dialer).
>> The whole interface was very smooth though.  I'm suddenly much more
>> optimistic about the project!
>>
>>     
>>> -- 
>>> Treviño's World - Life and Linux
>>> http://www.3v1n0.net/
>>>       
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