On 6/28/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Cailan Halliday</b> <<a href="mailto:chocolate.usa.chan@gmail.com">chocolate.usa.chan@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Does the multi-touch screen make this easier somehow?</blockquote><div><br>It might help a bit in corner cases, but what really makes or breaks it is a proper, global thinking of the user experience (which is generally not the same, and even sometimes directly opposed to GFX effects). It requires a lot of experiments, an ability to empathize with non-developers... many abilities considered non-technicals and boring by most hackers, unfortunately. This is *the* skill on which Apple built most of its successes, and something open source software tends to have a hard time getting right.
<br><br>However, user experience is especially important for a phone, so maybe openmoko will experience some great improvements over other OSS projects? IMO, the best thing technical people can do for openmoko is making it easy to script/extend/modify by moderately tech-savvy people: since hardcore hackers suck at building usable UIs, the best they can do is offering to new, different talents the opportunity to get it right. Or at least better.
<br><br>I'd bet on Lua (<a href="http://www.lua.org">www.lua.org</a>), because it's tiny, powerful, easy to embed, designed for easy interfacing with C and C++, and has a very gentle learning curve if you don't use advanced features. Let's provide bindings for UI bricks, phone features, and you're set. Look at
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: "Zurich Ex BT"; color: blue;" lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.lua.org/wshop05/Hamburg.pdf"><span style="" lang="PT-BR">http://www.lua.org/wshop05/Hamburg.pdf
</span></a> </span></span>for integration with a multitask, non-trivial C/C++ libraries set (that's the debriefing of the of adobe photoshop lightroom's implementation, in lua), or <a href="http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2004-04/msg00164.html">
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2004-04/msg00164.html</a> about non-developers easily getting hands-down with Lua (here, XBox level designers). I work for a wireless embedded devices builder, and you can't even imagine the kind of productivity boost Lua provides. Attempts with Python or Smalltalk never brought that kind of power (and Scheme scares everybody).
<br><br>Don't forget that easily upgradeable firmwares are not so common on phones, and phone builders don't want to modify the UI of shipped products. That means they don't have the best user feedbacks possible, whereas that's something openmoko will get. Up to us to exploit it efficiently, instead of focusing on skins and other mostly useless glitter.
<br></div></div>