fatfingershell ?

[Rafael Ignacio Zurita]

Hello Pike,
  and sorry for the late answer.

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 10:03:50AM +0200, pike wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I just *love* the fatfingershell
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV4p414_VJM
> http://fz.hobby-site.org/om/fatfingershell/
> 
> .. and i'm really curious if there's been
> any update since april 1 ?

Yes and no. I have almost ready a new version, with
these improvements:
 - optional vibrate for pressed keys
 - a little faster
 - easy scrolling
 - better sources and Makefile
 - perhaps disappear/darken keyboard when no keys are pressed.
 - opkg package

I will upload this version soon.
 
> If I think real hard, there's a number of
> things that come to mind to make it fully
> functional. Some of them I'm puzzling on,
> others are beyond me, but perhaps people
> on this list have suggestions ?

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, I will try to add my TODO list
all of them, to check out which are useful and which are not.
If you would like to help me with some of them, please.. 
I would love to do ffs better. The scripts for easy call/sms/gps
usgin dbus would be great. Somethinkg like "c pike" to do 
pike a call would be cool, etc ;)

> Here's a list I wrote:
> 
> *to handle incoming signals from the dbus:
> 
> - handlers to send dbus signals to the
>    running bash shell. it could be as simple
>    as a "wall" message - "incoming call from xxx".
>    I *imagine* thats just a matter of changing
>    yaml files, but that would break your
>    'default' phone functionality forever ? You'd
>    want to temporarily disable some default
>    handlers while fatfingershell is running.
>    I wouldnt know how to do that.
>    Perhaps Siglaunchd can help  ?
>    http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Siglaunchd
> 
> - Non-keyboard handlers to reply to such signals.
>    E.g. when the phone rings, you may be in the
>    middle of typing some text, or maybe not using
>    the keyboard at all (f.e. looking at tangogps).
>    So you can't type "yes" to answer the phone;
>    instead, pressing a button should answer
>    or cancel the call (and perhaps switch to bash
>    to start some interactive app, if you werent
>    already doing something else there ...)
> 
> *for the fatfingershell c app itself:
> 
> - a separate middle layer, so the transparency
>    of the middle layer doesnt affect the
>    transparency of the font
>    I'm afraid this depends on SDL_Terminal ..
>    not sure if it can do that at all.

Maybe a little hard with SDL_Terminal. Because we 
can set colors perhaps choosing better ones would help.

> - a slightly bigger font size

too hard now, but I am checking how to do that.
 
> - a way to set the terminal location/rect
>    to match other keyboard layouts
> 
> - a way to use a vertical layout instead.
>    that makes more sense to me, but also,
>    SHR-U crashes when resuming from deep sleep
>    in landscape mode, making ffshell
>    unusable for now :-(

Aha!, so your problem is landscape ffs with SHR-U :)
I think that is not a ffs problem. SHR-U should reume ok 
if it is in landscape, so we would need check why
SHR-U crashes in that state. After, we can talk if
vertical layout is easy to do or not ;)

> - arrows on the keyboard layout
>    to use your history.

I use "bash -o vi" if I remember well, so you can press ESC, and 
use K / J for history :)

> - removing the -d option, focusing on
>    'selecting' a layout instead. there
>    might be more then 2 options; and
>    it could be as simple as copying the
>    right files to the right place.

Good. I will add that in my current TODO.

> - additional layouts. i'm playing with
>    those :-)

Let me know if you need help or if I can use those as well :)

> - a 3rd keyboard for special chars
>    (1 is keys, 2 is numbers, 3 is "*") -
>    I'm short on screen estate already :-)

I think that I added all the good keys. Which special
chars you need?

> *for the package
> 
> - a suite of bash scripts to do things,
>    like send sms's and make calls. these
>    are around, and i'm playing with them.

That is essential I guess, to do ffs the only tool that we need.
 
> - smart bash tab completion for these
>    bash scripts, to do them fast. sending
>    an sms to "john" could be as quick as
>    typing "s[tab] @j[tab]".
>    no gui is ever going to beat that :-)

Maybe the scripts for those bash scripts could have short short
names, like s for sms, c for call, a for answer, etc.
If the script names are longer, then put them unique names since
the second letter and put them in $PATH, so we would only need
to press two chars+TAB.
 
> - a nice opk package :-)

On its way..

THANKS a lot for all above Pike, I will try to do my best.

Regards.

--
Rafael Ignacio Zurita
Buenos Aires, Argentina