keyboard (was Re: 2008.8 raster + zecke, great useability, and remaining flaws)

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:41:48 +0200 Chaosspawn23 <Chaosspawn23 at gmx.net> babbled:

> Harald Welte wrote:
> > I hope not being recognized as a troll now (my history with the project
> > helps). I believe it is almost foolish not to have that keyboard button by
> > default. This phone is still something primarily to be used by hardcore
> > geeks, and please show me the linux geek who doesn't use the keyboard here
> > or there with some application that doesn't hook into the
> > automatically-show-keyboard magic?
> > 
> > I wish for this kind of question there would be an easy-to-be-configured
> > polling mechanism that could be put up at some openmoko.org website.  I
> > think there are many of those issues where all kinds of people inside
> > openmoko inc. could benefit from a very quick-to-read opinion of their user
> > base without reading through tons of threads of discussions that get
> > time-consuming and boring over time.
> > 
> > Just my 2 cents,
> 
> +1
> 
> Even if the core applications can (and should!) implement the
> show-me-the-keyboard mechanism, I don't think it would be trivial
> to implement it for other (ported) apps like, say, Battle for Wesnoth
> or Numpty Physics (yes, I do realize those are all games ;) ).
> Just my two cents, too :)

i agree with harald 100%. i have asked for us to have a polling mechanism to
gauge popularity of decisions  with the users (i.e - people actually paying
cold hard cash for a freerunner as really OM as a distro isn't too useful
outside that device profile... :)). nothing has ever been done - i got some
positives, some negatives. mind you - the day i was told to remove the manual
button i made all the points you just did - i even cited "battle for wesnoth"
as an example (not to mention most SDL games, that qt didn't have auto-kbd
support in its x11 port etc. etc.) of things that will not work and break. om's
position is "well people can just port it - they have to write new stuff for om
anyway". i know - this creates a barrier of entry. makes the bar that much
higher to even get something to start working. but this topic has been done to
death in previous threads.

in many ways it's good to know i won't be the meat in the sandwich between
community and company going forward. :)

-- 
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster at openmoko.org>